The Cygnet and the Strigoi
by CapnSureYouAre
Summary: I used to think I was average, you know, dull and boring. Then I found out I was a shape-shifting, reincarnated death goddess with a knack for vengeance, the boy I'm obsessed with is my immortal enemy, and my friends are werewolves. So much for average.
1. Chapter 1 First Flight

**Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight or anything related to it.**

**A/N Revised: Many thanks to Robin and l. tyrpyn at PTB for their awesome beta work.**

* * *

'Tis strange that death should sing.

I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,

Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,

And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings,

His soul and body to their lasting rest.

_--William Shakespeare, King John, Act V scene vii_

Preface

I'd never given much thought to what it would take for me to destroy someone—though I'd had several close encounters in the last few months—but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.

I inhaled the hunter's scent as my stare ensnared his dark eyes from across the long room. His pupils shrank in fear; his ruby irises sparkled like gems. I could make a necklace of his eyes, a sign, a warning: There be monsters here.

Surely he was a good choice for my first kill, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Heroic even. That ought to count for something.

I knew that if I'd never gone to Forks, I wouldn't be facing the loss of my integrity now. Whatever happened tonight, I had to face that I was no longer innocent. But, hopeless as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision. When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's selfish to grieve when it turns into a nightmare.

The hunter cowered in the corner as I sauntered forward to kill him.

Ch. 1—First Flight

My mother began to roll the windows down as she drove me to the airport. I glared at her. She turned the air conditioner to a full blast instead. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix and the blazing sun had driven away any clouds. I have always preferred much cooler temperatures, so even though I was wearing a sleeveless top, white no less, I was drenched in sweat. My carry on item was a sweater—I would wear it as a coming home gesture.

Home was a small town named Forks in the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State. It exists under a near-constant cover of clouds and rains more than any other place in the United States. It was from this town and its haven of shade that my mother absconded with me when I was only a few months old. It was to this town that I escaped to for a month every summer until I was fourteen. That was the year that my mother put her foot down, afraid that I would stay in Forks. For these past three years she only let me vacation with my dad, Charlie, in California for two weeks instead.

Little did she know that I had spent our last vacation convincing Charlie to tell Renee that he would sue for full custody if she didn't let me go live with him in Forks. I loved Forks. I loved Charlie too, but more importantly, I just needed to be in Forks.

I detested Phoenix. I hated the blistering sun and oppressive heat. I loathed the vigorous, overcrowded city and its constant hum. Too many people, too many thoughts, too much heat. Just too much.

"Bella," my mom pleaded with me once again just before I got on the plane. "Please don't do this."

My mother looks nothing like me other than the color of her hair and her wide, childlike eyes. I felt a wave of peace wash through me as I looked at her. For once I thanked God she had Phil now to take care of her and her hare-brained tendencies.

"I have to go," I answered serenely. She said nothing in response, worrying her bottom lip. "Should I tell Charlie you said hi?" I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice but it was hard when I was still upset over her recent re-marriage.

She shrugged and looked down at her feet, looking for the entire world like a chastised child. "Will I see you soon? You can come visit us or I'll come back here if you need me." She seemed bereft, like she was losing her favorite toy.

I laughed. "Don't worry, it'll be great!" I could see a tear begin a trail down her cheek and sighed, wishing she would just be happy that I was happy. "I love you, Mom."

She hugged me tightly for a minute, and then I got on the plane. She and Phoenix soon fell away behind me.

All together it takes five hours to fly to Port Angeles, which is where I would be reunited with Charlie for the hour long drive to Forks. I'm very fond of flying, soaring over clouds and land, but I was impatient to spend time with Charlie. He calms me. I missed him.

Apparently Charlie was equally excited about the whole thing. He'd already registered me for high school and was going to help me get a car. He had asked me what I would want in my room, to make it feel like home. At the time we had discussed colors and home décor; both of which I was sure were unusual topics of conversation for Charlie.

Despite being unusual, it wasn't an awkward conversation. No conversation is awkward with Charlie. While neither of us could be called verbose, we understood each other on a fundamental level and could discuss anything from movies to politics to love (or the lack thereof) with ease and comfort. Perhaps though it was what we didn't have to say that was most important. He understood perfectly well why I had made my decision to move in with him, even though my mother had desperately tried to make me feel the same disdain for Forks that she always had.

It was raining when I landed in Port Angeles. It was a welcome change from the too bright sun of Phoenix.

Charlie was leaning against the cruiser in the standby zone as I pulled my luggage out of the terminal. I smirked at him. Charlie was very proud of his status as Police Chief Swan, even if it was just for a small town like Forks. I was proud of him too, but I was also glad to be getting a car of my own. I didn't relish the conspicuousness of driving around town with blue and red lights.

Once my luggage was tucked away in the trunk, Charlie lifted me in the air before wrapping me in a near crushing hug. For a somewhat small man it was surprising that he could still toss me around like a toddler. When I said as much he smiled widely, his cop 'stache lifting and his eyes crinkling.

"Nah, that's just because you don't eat enough kid. Have you been letting your mom cook again?" I rolled my eyes. We both knew better than to let Renee near a kitchen.

His smile softened somewhat sentimentally. "It sure is good to see you, Bells. Still lovely as usual." His smile lessened somewhat. "So just how is Renee? Oh, and… her husband."

I held back a grimace, wishing he hadn't asked. We were both still torn up that she could marry someone else. Charlie would never get over her. "They're fine Dad." I swiftly changed the subject. "I'm so glad to be here with you!"

His smile spread across his face again, lighting up his eyes. "Me too Bells, you have no idea how much."

As we got in the car and strapped in he turned to me excitedly. "Guess what? I found you the perfect car! You're going to love it."

"Really? What kind?" I asked enthusiastically. He would know what I would like best.

"A Chevy truck. You remember Billy Black from La Push? Used to go fishing with us?"

"Of course!" While Billy, my dad and their friend Harry would fish with poles, I would be diving into the cold water convinced I could catch the fish with my bare hands. Billy and Harry would laugh while Charlie smiled proclaiming: "That's my girl!"

"Well," Charlie continued, "He's in a wheelchair now, doesn't drive much anymore, so he offered to sell me his truck cheap."

I thought I could remember the truck but I wanted to make sure it was the right one. "What year is it?"

Charlie's mouth tilted up in a teasing smirk. "Well, the engine's had a lot of work—it's really only a few years old…"

He was drawing this out but I knew where this was going. "Okay, but when did he buy it?"

"Oh, I don't know… '84, '85 maybe?"

"Did he buy it new?" I was getting closer to an answer and he was giving in.

"Not exactly… it was probably new in the… late fifties? Early sixties?" He smiled outright.

I couldn't contain my excitement so I briefly clapped my hands and bounced in my seat. I'd always wanted a classic car, something with a history, a personality. Renee refused to let me buy one, even with my own savings. She was sure I'd stall out in the middle of the city somewhere. I guessed I should make sure that Charlie understood that I really didn't know how to fix a car though, before it was too late.

"That's so awesome Dad but you do know I don't know anything about cars, right? If anything should break or whatever, it's not like I can afford a mechanic."

"Nothing to worry about! It runs great. Built like a tank." I laughed. I could be Tank Girl at my new school.

I was momentarily concerned. "How cheap is cheap? I don't have all that much saved up."

He looked at me sheepishly. "Well, I sort of already bought it for you, a homecoming gift." I smiled back at him, content that he knew I was really coming home.

"Dad, you didn't have to do that, I was going to buy my own car." I was pretty much thrilled though. Maybe I could get some extra room décor with the money I'd saved up, really indulge my nesting desires.

"I was happy to do it honey. I'm going to take care of you; you're going to be at home here."

I smiled at him. "I already am." I looked at my father, trying to discern any visible signs of ageing. It was a game I had enjoyed playing for years. Was that a new laugh line? Was that gray hair there before? Although he was nearing fifty, Charlie really looked closer to thirty-five. I think he intentionally grew out his mustache in the last few years to look older. I had tried to talk to my mom about the fact that Charlie seemed to be perpetually young but she only got quiet and her lips thinned. She doesn't like me to talk about Charlie's good qualities. It makes her uncomfortable, as it should.

The conversation segued to the weather, the foliage, and the fauna surrounding us. I fawned over the moss and the ferns. It was so nice to be somewhere where nice, soft, moist things could grow. Everything in Phoenix is sharp and dry; from the sun, to the cacti, to the scorpions. Washington was… well, green. Seattle isn't known as the Emerald City for nothing.

We arrived at our cozy two-bedroom house. My heart fluttered with nostalgia; it was just as I remembered it. I let out a squeal when I saw my truck. It was big and rounded and a faded orangey red and IT WAS MINE! I hopped out of the cruiser and ran to my truck. I splayed my hands across its bulbous nose trying to hug it. Charlie laughed.

"I love it, love it, love it! Thank you so, so, so much!"

He laughed again. "I knew you'd love it! And you're welcome so, so, so much!"

We brought my luggage into the house and upstairs to my small bedroom. I gasped when the door opened. It was similar in many ways to the last time I had seen it but Charlie had been putting in some work on it. The walls were still blue but now they had a fresh coat of a dusky grayish-blue, not the sky blue of my childhood. The antique ivory wooden twin bed was the same but now had a plush royal purple comforter and purple and blue pillows. The curtains on the window overlooking the front yard had been changed to match the bed. On one wall there were several framed black and white nature photos, a tree, a swan, a flower and on the other… "Eeeep!" I certainly was squealing a lot today. "The Smiths! I can't believe you found me a Smiths poster!"

"Yeah, I just walked into Fork's Pharmacy the other day and: boom! There it was," he replied nonchalantly.

I turned to him and raised an eyebrow. He smiled back. "Okay, I had to go to a poster store in Seattle, but I was there to get the rest of it anyway."

I was beginning to get teary eyed. Everything was turning out even better than I thought it would. Charlie smiled and lightly chucked me under the chin. "Hey, why don't you unpack, I'll go order us some pizza to celebrate, then you should go to sleep. It's nearly nine already and you do have a big day tomorrow."

I smiled back and nodded my head. "Sounds good."

He walked out and I thought about the next day and all it would entail. I was glad that Forks High was small, as in less than four hundred students small. I had always felt crushed at Paradise Valley High in Phoenix. It seemed like you could barely move without trampling on someone. I did feel slightly uneasy about being the new girl though. Even at P.V.H. the new girl was stared at and contemplated like a new discovery. I hoped that with my pale skin and dark hair I would fit right in at Forks High like I never had in Phoenix. Maybe everyone would just overlook me since I wasn't tanned and highlighted.

After we ate our pizza (my side all veggie, Charlie's all meat) I went upstairs to take a shower. I smiled when I saw that Charlie had bought the strawberry shampoo and conditioner and the freesia body wash and lotion like I had requested. After the shower I felt tired but excited. A nervous energy ran through me and I hoped I'd be able to get some sleep because I was positive I'd need it for the morning. As it turned out I didn't need to worry. As soon as my head hit the pillow I was out.

At some point during the night I began to dream. At first I thought it was real. I thought something had woken me and I felt the need to get out of bed.

Every sense seemed heightened. The purples and blues of my room were vibrant, even in the darkness. My faux silk comforter rasped against my skin and I gasped as tingles shot through me, something low inside of me tightening. I stepped onto the carpet and the tingling began again. I curled my toes trying to increase the sensation.

Even with the fascinating sensation I was distracted when I realized I felt a pull on my chest. It was as if there was a fishing hook in my heart and someone was reeling me in, one slow jerk at a time. I looked down at my chest but saw nothing. I put my hands up and felt nothing, but I did notice that the color of my hands seemed different; almost iridescent, like an oil slick. Before I could think about it I felt the pull again. It seemed to be coming from the window.

I opened the window and leaned out slightly. It was raining and the wind stirred my hair. My hair seemed shinier too. I felt tingles again but this time they were different, not as pleasant. It wasn't an altogether terrible sensation. I was reminded of watching my grandmother stitching. Her needle would slide into the cloth so easily, with barely a mark, and then come up again pulling a long thread in its wake. The threading feeling started at my shoulders but before long had reached my fingers when it suddenly stopped.

I was afraid to look at my arms, afraid I would see blood. I didn't like blood… or did I? It seemed like maybe I used to not like it but now… now I can't think of anything better, more appetizing. So I looked. Maybe I could lick my arms if I was indeed bleeding.

I wasn't bleeding at all. To the contrary, my arms had never looked more pristine, more perfect, because now, they were covered in feathers. Beautiful white feathers covered my arms, long at the top and smaller at my hands, or at least, the place where my hands once were. I felt like I had just remembered something, or gained something back. It was as if my arms had once been wings a long time ago but I had forgotten and now here they were again, right where they should be.

This however made me think about the rest of me. I shouldn't have long legs and a short neck. I should have a tail, where was my tail? With these thoughts my body complied, just a slight stretch here, and some tucking and shrinking there. My pajama bottoms fell to the ground as my waist and legs changed but my camisole stayed on. It was loose but annoying. I couldn't pull it off with my wings so I would have to pluck it off with my mouth.

As my human teeth bit at a strap I wished I had a nice, sharp beak to bite through it: and then I did. Oh beak, I think I missed you.

Once the camisole fell to the ground I turned back to the window. I should probably go outside. I don't think Charlie would want a bird in the house. I hopped onto the windowsill and looked down at the ground through the rain. It seemed like quite a distance but I didn't feel afraid. I would just fly down. So I did. It was simple, and it felt wonderful, the wind and the rain ruffling through my feathers.

I looked up and wondered if I could fly back up. Yes, I could. So easy. Why hadn't I done this before? Maybe I had, I couldn't remember. When I flew down again I landed closer to the sidewalk. I heard the flapping of someone else's wings and looked up at the tree branch above me. A large brown owl sat sheltered in the tree. He tilted his head at me, almost upside down and blinked first one big yellow eye, than the other. "Who?"

Good question. I didn't know. I tilted my head back at him then looked down at myself, seeking some kind of answer. Swan, I was Swan. I remembered being called that. It seemed right. It looked right. The reflection from the downstairs window confirmed it. I looked back up to Owl to tell him so and to thank him for asking. I opened my mouth but I couldn't speak like I remembered. This throat just sings and trills and chirps. Good enough for me. I've never been verbose.

I decided to explore. I remembered I was thirsty: my long non-speaking throat burned. Owl swooped down near me and caught a mouse. Good for him. The scent of Mouse's blood fanned the flames in my throat but I knew it wasn't really what I wanted. I began to waddle down the sidewalk searching. Even with webbed feet my walk was still awkward. I've always been a creature of water.

Three houses down a man got out of his car. When he shut his door I could smell him. This was what I wanted, not Mouse. In a blink I had soared to him without thought. As I landed with a slight flutter he turned and jumped, clutching his chest. He stared at me, eyes wide. I stared back, eyes narrowed. Hello, Dinner.

His moment of fear turned to awe. He smiled at me, enchanted. If I still had lips, I would have smiled back, salivating. "Hello, pretty thing. What are you doing out here like this?"

I didn't like some old man calling me "pretty thing," especially as I contemplated eating him. I reached my neck up and snapped my beak close to his arm to let him know how I felt. He jumped back, frowning and started to walk to his house. I started to waddle toward him slowly, hoping that he wouldn't run before I could get my beak on him. When I was about a foot away I heard wings again and Owl landed in front of me. He spread his wings out and opened his beak, as if he were protecting Dinner.

I glared at him. He had his Mouse, let me have Dinner! As I watched Owl his beak seemed to grow and elongate, changing texture and color; no longer a beak but a toothy, reptilian jaw. Owl had an alligator's mouth. I had always been afraid of alligators when I had seen them at the zoo. I remembered zoos! I closed my eyes and shook my head and fluffed my feathers. When I opened my eyes again Owl was just Owl, with an Owl shaped beak. I sighed and turned away. I guess Mouse would have to do.

When I wasn't thinking about Dinner anymore I could concentrate on the pull again coming from my chest. I followed it down the road but it was further than these feet felt comfortable taking me. I soared into the air. The pull took me down the highway; I watched cars go by below me. In the dark and rain there weren't many. Most of the Dinners were home, tucked in safe somewhere. Oh look, there goes a Happy Meal: pink-cheeked children sleeping in the back seat of a Suburban.

The pull took me down a long winding driveway, past a large white and heavily windowed house where thousands of Swans looked back at me as I passed. Hello, lovelies.

It took me through some woods and down a stream. The pull throbbed. I was close, I was almost reeled in. I landed near the stream and lifted my head to sniff my surroundings.

There was someone out here. No, two someones. They smelled so much better than Dinner. They were Dessert. They were Dessert and flowers and rain and happiness and everything wonderful curled up into one big happy scent. The one that was furthest away smelled the best though. They were coming towards me. I wondered if they were hunting the deer who were sipping at the stream a few yards away. Who hunts deer in the dead of the night in the drizzle? Dessert, apparently.

I turned to the stream and grabbed a fish in my beak while I waited. The fish didn't know what was coming. Nor did the second, or third, or twenty-first. I decided to stop then so I wouldn't be too full when Dessert made an appearance which would be any minute, judging by the sounds in the nearby undergrowth.

In the blink of an eye Dessert Number One appeared and took down one of the deer. After a second blink the other two were goners. He was fast, much faster than a human should be. I thought he had used a knife on the deer but apparently he somehow bit through their hides. The air was rich with their quickly cooling blood. He paused hunched over the third deer, his back to me. He slowly stood and turned to face me.

I wondered if he was perceptive enough to feel me watching him, planning his demise. He looked around me, behind me, but not at me. I was somewhat disappointed that he thought me less than dangerous. I almost felt like kin with him. It would be hard to eat him feeling that way. Maybe my disappointment was showing on my beak because he finally looked at me with surprise.

He wiped the blood off his face with the back of his sleeve. What a waste. "Hello," he said to me. I couldn't answer back, he should know this. His blonde curls wavered slightly in the wind and he smiled then shook his head. "Foolish," he whispered under his breath in a slight southern accent. Yum. Before I could take a bite out of him another voice called from the forest.

"Jazz? Are you ready to head back?" This voice, this velvet voice, was trying to rip my heart out. The pull on my chest became unbearable. It was painful and wonderful at the same time, like eating too much birthday cake and knowing you'll feel like throwing up later but you just can't stop yourself.

Dessert/Jazz had turned his head towards the voice when it called but snapped it back towards me like he could feel my torture/elation. I closed my eyes hoping when I opened them I would be awake. I wasn't, but Dessert/Jazz was gone, leaving barely a trace of broken grass and twigs through the undergrowth behind him.

I walked a little ways down the stream, catching a few mice and swallowing them whole before I took to the air, flying my way back home. I flew straight into my window and curled up in front of it despondently. I tucked my beak beneath one wing and if I could have cried, I would have.

* * *

E/N Revised: Please review and come visit the Cygnet and the Strigoi thread on the Twilighted AU forum.


	2. Chapter 2 Predator

**Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or anything related to it. Nor do I condone strangling puppies or any animals for that matter.**

**E/N Revised: Thanks to R. Nichols and Miiki at Project Team Beta for introducing me to semi-colons and colons. ;-)**

* * *

**Chapter 2: Predator**

_EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_

The shrieking that awoke me was too loud and shrill. It echoed in my head like a scream in a cave, even though it was muffled by my arm over my ear. This was not my alarm clock. My alarm clock was set to play the classical music station, not some screaming alarm. It dawned on me where I was; Forks, at last.

I pulled my hands down to cover both ears then threw my right hand out to slap the alarm; instead I hit carpet. Strange, I should have been several feet off the ground. Did I fall out of bed last night?

I concentrated and realized that not only could I feel carpet beneath my hand, I could feel carpet everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. Even places that should have been covered by my pajamas were instead cuddled against the carpet, and the sensation was bizarre. It seemed that I could feel every little pill and strand in the carpet, and I was reminded of a snippet from the previous night's dream.

Tingling shot through me as I curled my toes into the carpet.

I slowly opened one eye to get a better idea of what was going on, but quickly opened the other one when I saw that something was definitely off. I wasn't really very close to the bed at all. Unless I fell off then rolled several times I shouldn't be where I was, curled up in front of the window. I also had no idea why my pajamas were piled on the ground several feet away. I sat up in surprise then wrapped my arms around me for decency's sake. What if Charlie had come in to wake me up or at least to tell me to turn off the damn alarm?

With my hands otherwise occupied and not now protecting my ears, the alarm again became a priority. I glanced behind me towards the window to check that I wouldn't be seen in all my nude glory if I stood to get to the alarm. The window was open, and not just cracked for air but wide open. Ummm, okay, I definitely do not remember that.

The pull on my chest seemed to be coming from the window… feathers… wings.

I would just have to think about that later. Since I absolutely wasn't standing up in front of the window, I army crawled across the room to my alarm clock, where I successfully silenced its evil siren with one good slap. Once I was out of range of the window, I stood to inspect myself, sure that I would have rug burns on my knees and possibly my arms. Surprisingly, my skin wasn't even reddened. Even more surprisingly, it was gleaming, like there were rainbows dancing under my skin. The only logical explanation I could think of was that Charlie must have bought the wrong type of lotion after all.

I slid along my wall to get to my dresser and then closet, and once I was dressed I went to my window and shut it. I was disappointed that the air outside wasn't cooler: I was worried that my new raincoat would probably be uncomfortably warm. I pressed my forehead against the glass and looked down at the fog below, letting it calm me. It was so thick I could imagine a still, soothing lake below it. I sighed, then headed towards the restroom.

Seeing my face in the mirror over the sink, I realized that my face looked shiny just like my hands. I leaned in closer to the reflection, trying to see if there was glitter or something visible on me, but I could pinpoint nothing in particular. My hair also seemed particularly bright. I picked up the lotion I had put on last night, but it appeared to be the exact same kind I had used for years. I flipped open the top and squeezed a smidgen into my palm and brought it close to my face. It didn't appear to have even a hint of sparkle to it, just the same white cream I had always seen. I looked back up to my mirror. Even my eyes seemed brighter; my lashes longer, my lips redder. I shook my head at myself and smirked. It must be Forks. Everything grows stronger and more vital here.

I headed downstairs and Charlie already had a bowl of my favorite Honey Nut O's on the table, the milk ready to pour. He was standing by the coffee maker and lifted the pot to me in question. I smiled but shook my head. I should probably lay off the caffeine. Apparently it was giving me crazy dreams.

Looking closely, I could tell that Charlie's skin and hair seemed unusually shiny today too. I'd never noticed that before. Surely Charlie hadn't used my lotion last night. Perhaps he'd installed some kind of special light bulbs in the house? I smirked when I noticed a glint off of his extra shiny mustache. If he was using my lotion I was sure he was going to get hell at the cop shop.

"So, kiddo… did you sleep well last night?"

I had a feeling even Charlie would look askance at me if I told him I had dreamed of being a cannibalistic bird; especially if I mentioned that I really kind of liked it. As for the naked carpet camp out, well, I couldn't even begin to go there.

"Good… comfy." I looked into my bowl, giddy that a blush didn't rush to my cheeks to betray me for once. I slowly pushed an O under the milk, wishing I could drown my memories so easily.

Charlie eyed me suspiciously, sensing that I was leaving something out. I had forgotten about that part of living with a damn good cop. He could always sniff out lies, or even half truths. It probably didn't help that I was an open book for the most part. Eventually though, I guess he figured that whatever I was lying about couldn't be too important, because he let the subject drop. Propped against the counter he took a long swig of his coffee and closed his eyes in happiness. I chuckled to see him so content over a cup of java. He looked back at me and smiled ruefully.

"Well, I'm out. Have to go patrol the streets. Walter Daniels a few doors down reported a rabid swan terrorizing the streets last night."

I choked on an O. Charlie hastily slapped my back until I waved him off and could breathe again.

"You okay?"

"Sure, nah, I'm fine. Can swans even get rabies?"

Charlie laughed. "No, only mammals can. They can be very vicious when they're protecting their young though." He smiled but didn't let me in on the joke. He looked back down at me affectionately before reaching out to ruffle my shiny hair. "Be careful out there. Call me if you see any attacking birds." He winked and then turned to walk out.

I snorted. "Sure, will do, Chief."

After I had washed and put away my bowl and spoon, I grabbed my bag and jacket from the entryway where I had deposited them on my way to the kitchen. I put them on and then wiggled into my new rain boots before stepping outside. I knew it was ridiculous to get sentimental over rain gear but I couldn't stop the grin that spread over my face. My grin grew as I locked the front door and ran out to my truck. It disappeared when I climbed into the truck and was overwhelmed by the smells of tobacco, gasoline and peppermint.

Good grief! Had Billy smoked six packs a day in here for the last twenty years? And there was no way that gasoline smell was normal, it was far too strong. I worried for a moment that maybe I shouldn't be driving my truck in case it had a leak, but then reminded myself that there was no way Charlie would buy me a truck that wasn't perfectly safe to drive.

With some hesitation I started the ignition and the truck roared to life. I tested the radio, but the sound of the engine growling at me just made the pop music playing on the one non-static station I could find sound even more obnoxious than normal.

I drove down the highway for just a couple of miles and quickly came to the Forks High School sign. The cluster of buildings reminded me more of a quaint old college than a prison like my old school did. I already felt more at ease; I was pretty certain that I wouldn't be subjected to a metal detector today.

I found the building marked FRONT OFFICE and once I had parked, taking up two spaces (I was still learning how to maneuver my new baby) I walked through the door to ask for directions. The room was warm and plant-filled and I walked up to the counter; a large, red-haired woman looked up at me from a desk. Her eyes widened in shock. I looked down at myself to do a fly check. Nope, all clear there. Was I too overdressed? She was just in a t-shirt, and it was awfully warm outside for this time of year.

"C-can I help you?" Her mouth hung open for a moment, wide like her eyes. I wished fervently that I'd looked in a mirror after breakfast this morning. I took a moment to be surprised that my face wasn't burning in shame. That's odd.

"I'm Isabella Swan." Her eyes lit up with understanding and a shy smile flittered across her mouth.

"Of course, you're Charlie's daughter." A blush spread across her face, clashing with her hair as she said my dad's name. She ducked her head and found some documents on her messy desk. "Here are your schedule and a map." She showed me the quickest way to get to my classes, and handed me a slip for my teachers to sign. "Just bring that back to me at the end of the day."

I thanked her and turned to walk out the door. "Isabella!" she called with a hint of desperation. I turned, wondering if she was going to tell me what mess I had on me before I made an ass of myself.

She blushed again. "Have a good day, Isabella."

"Ummm, thanks, it's just Bella by the way." I exited rather quickly, still irritated that she was just going to let me suffer with whatever was making her stare at me.

I got back into my truck and followed arriving students to the main parking lot. Most of the cars were older and I only saw one remotely expensive car, a newer model Volvo, in the whole lot. I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe here my obviously inexpensive vehicle and clothing wouldn't immediately earn me attention as a "poor" student.

I left my truck and walked around the cafeteria to get to my first class. I followed the example of the kids in front of me and hung my coat up on a hook by the door, before going to the front to hand my slip to the teacher. When he looked up from my slip he gawked at me. He stared a moment longer than I was comfortable with, and then he blushed and looked back down to sign my slip. I'm really going to have to find a mirror, pronto.

He sent me to a desk at the back and I hoped this would mean fewer people would be staring at… well, whatever the hell was wrong with me. Of course, I had no such luck. The girls for the most part tried to only look at me surreptitiously. They would drop a pen and bend to get a look, or lean back in a yawn. It would have been comical if it weren't for the boys: They didn't bother to hide their stares.

I was starting to wonder if I had grown a second head, and ducked down to peruse the reading list. I had read everything, which I supposed would make class easy, except it wouldn't give me anything to distract me from the disturbing looks I was getting if this kept up for the rest of the semester.

Eventually the bell rang, and one of the gaping lemmings finally gathered up the nerve to talk to me. He seemed like such a stereotypical nerd that I could practically smell a chess board on him. He came up to me and stood a little closer to me than was necessary as I stood and gathered my belongings. He opened his mouth to speak, but paused when he looked in my eyes. He seemed to freeze. This was really getting old.

"I'm Bella." I stuck my hand out and he looked at it like a starving man at Thanksgiving dinner. He quickly lifted his eyes back to mine.

"Errrrrrrr…" he cleared his throat. "Eric, I'm Eric."

"Nice to meet you?" I couldn't help but turn it into a question. When he still showed no signs of shaking my hand, I turned around in frustration and walked to the door.

"Class?!?" He shouted behind me. I sharply turned to glare at him. He stared back sheepishly.

"Sorry. What's your next class?"

I sighed. "Government. Building six."

"Do you want me to show you?"

"Ummm… okay?"

Eric walked to the coats by the door but didn't take his eyes off me. He reached out and blindly grabbed a pink fur lined coat. "Hey!" a light haired girl shrieked as she snatched it out of his hands.

He snapped to attention and blushed, and then he grabbed a black coat instead. I noticed that everyone else's coats seemed far thicker than mine and I wondered how they weren't sweating to death. I looked out the door and saw it wasn't raining anymore so I grabbed my coat and folded it over my arm.

Eric looked at me with concern. "I know your coat is thin and all, but you're going to want to put it on or you'll definitely freeze out there."

I raised an eyebrow at him. Apparently the boy had a sense of humor. I chuckled. "Yeah, okay, guess I'll freeze." As we walked outside he continued to look at me, now clearly puzzled.

"Aren't you from Phoenix?"

"Yep, I know, I'm too pale to be from Arizona."

He smiled. "Well, that too but what I meant was, how are you used to the rain and cold?"

I laughed, "I love the rain. It was quite a treat to have rain in Phoenix. As for the cold, I can't wait for it to get here."

He looked confused which in turn confused me. I looked up and saw that we were almost to my building. "Guess this is my stop."

He smiled again. "Maybe we'll have more classes together."

"Yeah, maybe." I watched him as he turned and walked away; chess boy was a bit odd.

After enduring more blatant stares in Government, I found my way to Trigonometry where the teacher, Mr. Varner, made me stand in front of the class as he introduced me as if I were a new car on The Price is Right. Once again I was amazed that my cheeks weren't burning. One of the girls apparently decided that she was the prize winner once she found out we had our next class together. When the bell rang we stood, and she swiftly linked our arms before dragging me to our Spanish class. In Spanish she introduced me to everyone as if she'd known me for years. Eventually class ended and she dragged me to the cafeteria for lunch.

Once we were seated, she introduced me to her friends whose names I didn't catch because I was too distracted by their blatant staring. I turned to the possessive girl and tried to whisper in her ear. "If I had spinach in my teeth or something you'd tell me, right?"

A wide, almost frightening grin spread across her face and her eyes sparkled. "Of course! 'Cause, you know, we're tight like that! Right, Bella?"

Although I thought she phrased her response suspiciously she seemed to want some validation, so I smiled back. "Exactly, tight like this." I lifted my hand to show her my crossed fingers. Her smile grew impossibly wider; I swear I could see molars. She reached out and grabbed my hand with both of hers and swung it back and forth between us. I suddenly heard giggling and squealing, but when I looked around, couldn't find the culprit.

"Oooookay, I'm going to need that back now so I can eat." I tried not to sound as uncomfortable as I felt but she blushed and let me go. Oddly everyone here seemed to be blushing today. I was just glad it wasn't me.

I picked at my food but felt too self-conscious to actually eat. I looked up and saw the boy from English, Eric, waving frantically to me from across the room. I smiled wryly and quickly waved back.

It was then that I felt it, the tugging on my chest from my previous night's dream. I turned towards the cafeteria doors. Whatever was pulling at me was beyond those swinging doors. I held my breath as the doors were pushed in, and a tall couple walked through. They weren't causing the pull, but they were abnormally good looking.

The boy was built like Hercules and had dark, curly hair and dimples you could get lost in. The girl had long, blonde, wavy hair and had the figure of Miss USA combined with the sultriness of a lingerie model. They were both even paler than me and had dark, bruise like shadows under their golden eyes as if they hadn't slept in ages. By the way they were ogling each other there was no need to guess what kept them up at night.

The doors began to push open again and I stared at them once more. A small girl pushed through. She seemed very delicate, had short spiky hair and was impeccably dressed. She was pale too and was just as sleep deprived as the couple ahead of her. She seemed to be dragging someone into the room. I saw one cowboy booted foot enter the room and looked up. My jaw dropped open in shock.

Jazz/Dessert! I couldn't believe it. How was it possible that a guy I know I had never met would appear in a dream one night, and show up at my school the next day? Even more strangely, I had carried over my feelings of kinship towards him. When he first walked through the door he seemed pained, and this made me sad for him. His head snapped up and he turned to stare at me. I shrank back in my seat. His stare seemed more intrusive than those I had put up with all morning. He shook his head in confusion and whispered "Foolish." His voice sounded exactly as I remembered it. I was completely creeped out, especially once I realized I heard him whisper from across a noisy cafeteria.

My eyes focused on the door again. The Puller was there. The world seemed to slow to a crawl as the door pushed in and The Puller walked through. I inhaled sharply. Even before I could see him, I could smell him. He was Cinnamon Dulce Sopapilla Cheesecake and licorice and sandalwood and sex and magic all rolled into one tasty package. The door blocking my view of him closed and I saw him.

I slammed my eyes closed and stopped breathing, certain I would begin drooling any minute. Holy mackerel, what do they put in the water here??? He was tall and lean with a shock of bronze hair. He had the same pale skin and golden eyes as his friends and the same dark shadows under his eyes, though his and Jazz/Dessert's were a little less noticeable. For the brief moment I saw him it seemed like he was stalking through the cafeteria in an almost leonine way. He was radiating danger: be careful chickadees, the lion is hunting. Gah, he was hot.

My eyes flew open when I heard a groan, then slammed shut again when I realized it was coming from me. Maybe I should just go with it and have a When Harry Met Sally diner moment right here in the middle of everyone. They were all staring already; I might as well give them a show. I felt a hand grip my upper arm and cracked an eye open.

Possessive Girl was grabbing me and seemed far too concerned for the circumstances. "Bella?" She shook me. "Bella, are you okay?" Her last word came out as a squeak.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just…ummm… good sandwich. Really good sandwich."

She looked confused, which I was starting to think was a common look for her. "Oh, okay… it's just, you looked kind of like you were in pain."

I held back a snort and was glad I wasn't drinking milk at the time. I was sure the girl across from me wouldn't appreciate a milk geyser from my nose.

I looked around again and saw that The Puller and his friends had made it through the lunch line and were sitting by themselves at a table in the corner. The Puller seemed disturbed as he scanned the cafeteria for somebody. His eyes swept my table then jerked back to me and widened almost imperceptibly. He turned to the petite girl and whispered so softly that I marveled at the acoustics in this room when I actually understood him.

"You said the new girl wasn't coming," he bit out as he subtly nodded his head in my direction. Wasn't coming? I wondered what he was talking about.

The girl turned her head and stared at me. Her jaw dropped and a moment of surprise and fear crossed her face, as if I were strangling a puppy while she watched. Her face quickly changed into a still mask. She looked back to the boy. He almost seemed angry when he spoke to her again.

"How is that even possible? You were looking specifically for her, there had to be something." The girl just continued to look at him, not saying a word. "Never mind, we'll just have to talk to Carlisle tonight, see if he has any insight." They were staring at each other animatedly. He seemed to be listening to her, but her lips didn't even move. "Of course she can't hear me; I'm not even moving my lips enough for her to read them."

Surely he wasn't talking about me? Jazz/Dessert suddenly looked from the petite girl to The Puller. "Do you remember me telling you about that swan last night?" He turned to the boy. "The one you said couldn't be here at this time of year? And how I must have imagined the emotions I felt? Well, I feel the exact same emotions now, the exact same flavor, and they're coming from the new girl."

All five beautiful heads turned to look at me at the same time. Ten golden eyes stared at me, joining the other hundred or so bland ones already staring at me. The whole conversation was bizarre, and I turned away from them and gave Possessive Girl my full attention. She smiled at me and I smiled back.

"Soooo," I wished I could remember her real name. "Who are those kids in the corner?" I tried to subtly nod my head to indicate The Puller and Co., but I probably just looked like I had a tick.

P.G. looked in their direction. She giggled nervously. "The big one is Emmett Cullen, and the red-headed boy and the small girl are Edward and Alice Cullen. The blondes are Jasper and Rosalie Hale." Oh, Jazz was short for Jasper; it suited him. Edward, on the other hand, just didn't seem astounding enough for him. I supposed that it was a regal name, which did make sense; he certainly was kingly.

P.G. leaned in closer to whisper in my ear. "They were all adopted by Dr. and Mrs. Cullen and they're all, well, together." I looked across the room at them in panic. "Well, except for Edward, he just thinks he's too good for anyone here." I breathed an involuntary sigh of relief. "Rosalie and Jasper are the only ones who are actually related. Mrs. Cullen is their aunt or something and they've been with her since they were kids, though she was probably younger than us when they were born."

I raised an eyebrow. "So Dr. Cullen has a hot, young trophy wife?" P.G. shook her head, smirking as she gossiped.

"Don't get me wrong, she's as pretty as the rest of them but she's probably only a couple of years younger than Dr. Cullen, if that. He's really young too, and drop dead gorgeous."

I laughed. "So, there are seven incredibly good looking youngish adults living in one house, and they're for the most part all hooking up?" At her vigorous nod I joked;"Where can I sign up?"

She sighed. "Exactly, right? But you'd have to get to Edward, and since no girl has been able to do that since they moved here from Alaska two years ago, I'll just have to say, good luck with that." She looked at me for a moment, her face shifting from jealousy to admiration to some strange mixture of the two. "Although, if anyone can, it might be you."

I felt uncomfortable under her piercing gaze and looked back over to the corner table where the Cullen/Hales were standing with their untouched trays. Edward seemed amused by something; his smirk made me feel like smiling.

They left, gliding out of the room without a word, and I tried to pay more attention to the other kids at my table. I heard someone call Possessive Girl "Jess" and remembered she had introduced herself as Jessica. Another girl, the only shy one at the table, reminded me that her name was Angela, and it turned out that we had Biology II together in the next class. When the bell rang I followed her, but when we got to class she already had a lab partner. I looked around and found the only empty seat at the back of the room. I looked next to it and discovered none other than Edward Cullen.

My heart leapt in my chest and felt like it stopped for a full minute. My mouth began to salivate and my throat felt like I'd been wandering in the desert for forty years. I looked back towards the teacher but kept Edward in my peripheral vision. I stepped towards the teacher to hand him my slip and stepped in front of the heating duct, which decided at that moment to kick on. Seriously? Was it not warm enough for these folks?

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Edward stiffen. The teacher handed me back my slip, and I turned and headed up the aisle. I tried not to look at Edward until I got to my desk. I took a deep breath to calm myself but was instead assaulted once more with his delicious scent. My throat ached. I took a moment to wonder what he would do if I leaned over and licked him; or better yet bit him. I then wondered what everyone else would do if I unhinged my jaw and swallowed him whole like an anaconda. It probably wouldn't go over so well.

I opened my eyes to look at him, hoping my desire and hunger weren't showing in my eyes.

To my shock he was glaring at me and leaning as far away from me as he could without falling out of his chair. His hand was covering his mouth, and he seemed both absolutely repulsed and completely horrified as we looked at each other. I almost wondered if he'd read my thoughts.

An unexpected surge of anger swelled up in me as I watched him. What was wrong with these people? I didn't expect him to fall at my feet but couldn't he at least be polite? I dropped my bag on the ground and stepped towards him, reaching my hand out: I would force him to say "hi" if it killed me.

"Hi. I'm Bella and you are?" I knew perfectly well who he was, but I would make him speak to me. Instead he scrambled out of his seat and kept the stool in front of him like a shield. I dropped my hand and leaned forward so only he would hear me.

"Look, I don't know what your deal is, but you don't have to treat me like I'm contagious. I don't bite, so sit back down and stop making a spectacle." I hissed everything so quickly and quietly I would be amazed if he actually heard me. Instead of sitting, however, he grabbed his binder from the table with his free hand and walked out of the room. He moved as if he wanted desperately to break out in a run; he was trying to run away from me.

In one way, the fact that he couldn't stand to be around me broke my heart; unfortunately for him, it also made my tenuous hold on my control break. Like a dam collapsing I felt adrenaline rush through my body. That beautiful boy and his appetizing smell were running away from me, and all I wanted to do was chase after him. Without thinking I was back to the classroom door. Mr. Banner had been stunned when Edward left but now shouted "Mr. Cullen? Ms. Swan? Wait!"

I kept going, knowing he wouldn't chase us. Outside the door I didn't see Edward anywhere. I closed my eyes and inhaled; my feet followed his scent. When I opened my eyes again I was by the door of the Front Office. I knew there was no way I should have been able to get there so quickly, and I looked around to see if anyone had seen me, but I was still alone outside.

I leaned against the wall behind the door and strained to hear the conversation inside. I could hear his beautiful voice, dripping like honey, trying to sweet talk the secretary into letting him change out of our Biology class. The woman stuttered and stammered an apology that everything was full. Muttering something about suffering, he started to leave the building; I tried to make myself small behind the door as he turned toward the parking lot in the opposite direction.

He started to walk back down the sidewalk towards the parking lot shaking his head and then walked faster, looking around to see if anyone was watching: He was running from me again. I couldn't take it. With a blink I was following; I caught up faster than my short legs should have been able to. Sensing someone, he stopped suddenly, and I was on my tiptoes to keep from crashing into him.

My nose was an inch from his broad back and I couldn't keep from sniffing him. I whimpered and then, of their own volition, my teeth snapped at his neck.

Before I knew what happened, he turned around to face me and I stepped back, slapping a hand across my mouth. Somehow, with just a couple of steps between the two of us, we were already ten feet apart.

He glared at me again, loathing and desire mixed in his eyes. "What are you doing here? Don't you have any sense of self preservation?"

I laughed bitterly. "Don't you?" I didn't know what was going on, but in that moment I did know that I was perfectly capable of tearing into and literally, physically devouring the beautiful boy in front of me. The really terrifying part was how much I desperately wanted to.

His expression changed. The loathing fell away from his eyes to reveal blatant need and pity; I wondered if he was echoing my own expression. I lifted my hands to my face hoping to rub his visage from my retinas and to block his seductive scent with my own regular strawberry and freesia smell.

It did no good, however, because soon he was standing in front of me. The pull in my chest became frantic as my heart tried to climb out of me and swap with his. I felt tingles of static close to my fingertips on my forehead.

"Please," his voice swirled through me, "Don't cover your face. It's all that's stopping me…"

I began to lower my hands and as I looked into his eyes, now black with his need, my left hand snaked up to grab his right hand where it hovered just in front of my face. I'm pretty certain I would have bit him then except I was too overwhelmed by the sensation he caused in me. The pulling in my chest stopped. I believe my heart stopped completely. I felt like I had been dropped inside a giant bottle of champagne and could feel tiny bubbles popping all over me. I shivered.

"But you're so warm," he whispered inside my head. His lips, however, didn't move. He just looked at me, needing me, giving in to me.

"No, you're just cold. Why are you cold, it's hot out here?"

He dropped his hand and a mask came down over his face. The hate was gone but now only blankness remained. "It's forty-eight degrees. It's not warm at all, but you are." Suspicion flitted across his face before the mask came down again.

I needed to get out of here before I really did something to arouse his suspicion. "I'll just tell Mr. Banner you didn't feel well and I was just making sure you made it to the office. You really should get checked out, you are too cold. You might be coming down with something."

He smirked at me but nodded his head once. He watched me intensely for a moment as I started to walk back to class, then turned on his heel and began to walk swiftly to the parking lot. Oh God, he was running away again. My stomach clenched. "Stop!" I squeaked before I could chase him down.

"Please," I whispered, "just stay where you are and don't move until you hear the door close behind me. Please don't run from me again."

He didn't move or say anything so since his back was to me, I allowed my body to move at the inhuman speed it wanted to until I was safely ensconced in the building again.

I entered the class again, tonelessly explaining to Mr. Banner that Edward was ill and went home. At the end of class a boy introduced himself as Mike, and stated that if he'd been lucky enough to sit next to me, he wouldn't ever leave class for anything, even if he was puking like crazy. I didn't bother to hide my disgust.

We had P.E. together, and since it was my first day I sat in the bleachers of the gym trying not to think about anything, but Mike kept coming over to try to talk to me. After class I went back to the office to drop off my signed slip. The secretary smiled shyly at me and asked how my first day went.

"Just peachy," I bit out sarcastically, before turning and leaving school for the day.


	3. Chapter 3 The Other White Meat

**Disclaimer: I do not own twilight or anything related to it.**

**A/N: Thanks to those of you who have reviewed and recommended this story to your friends. I'm still amazed anyone is reading this.**

**A/N revised: Special thanks to Alyssa and Priscilla at Project Team Beta for perfecting my punctuation. :-)**

* * *

Chapter 3- The Other White Meat

I started the truck with a satisfying roar. Hopefully, it would keep people out of my way. I was too distracted to rely on my own senses to keep me from running someone over. I made the short trip home, fighting not to stare at myself in my rear view mirror. I had finally figured out what everyone had been staring at all day; the Crazy. I just knew it must be written all over my face. I probably had serial killer eyes, the kind where you can see the white all the way around. I imagined Charles Manson with Bella hair. I supposed it was some consolation that I realized I was a nutcase before I actually hurt someone.

When I reached home, I ran upstairs to the bathroom. Everything passed in a blur and I muttered to myself, "Can't be real, can't be real." I locked the bathroom door behind me, and climbed onto the counter, my knees straddling the sink basin as I leaned within millimeters of the mirror. I held my breath as I carefully examined myself.

I couldn't see the whites of my eyes. If anything, my eyes were drowsily hooded as if I were trying to seduce myself. My pupils were so dilated, I could barely see a ring of brown around them. It reminded me of Edward's needy black eyes, and twin surges of desire and hunger shot through me. I sighed and continued my perusal.

My eyelashes were longer and darker than I remembered them being in the morning. Somewhere in the back of my brain there was a quick calculation. My eyelashes were two millimeters longer than they were this morning. This morning they were one millimeter longer than the previous night.

Since when has any part of my brain kept track of my eyelash growth? With this thought I realized that somehow I was keeping track of all kinds of figures. It was like I had opened a filing cabinet full of random and useless facts: the number of green tiles on the bathroom walls (316 ½), the temperature of the room (68 degrees Fahrenheit), the brightness of the vanity lights and how long it would take each to burn out (the far right light at 50 lux would go out in 30 hours, or 16 lightings, whichever came first).

I had no evidence for any of these facts, but I could prove the last. I fought against indulging myself for a moment, before my right hand shot out to turn off the light switch. I remained staring at myself, not needing to look to find the switch. Last night, it had taken me a full two minutes to even remember where the switch was in the first place. Now I found it blindly, from a strange position no less.

My eyes didn't need any time to adjust to the windowless darkness of the bathroom. I could see myself almost as clearly in the mirror as I could with the lights on; only the colors were muted. Without the abnormal shininess of my skin and hair, I looked almost normal again in the dark. I flipped the switch on and off again, over and over. In the strobe-light effect I watched myself change from normal Bella to shiny Bella and back.

When the switch flipped on for the sixteenth time I heard a sizzle and the room was one burnt bulb darker. I slowly lowered my arm to my side, trying not to panic. I tried to convince myself that it meant nothing or, at worst, was a coincidence. I didn't believe myself, but I continued my examination.

My lips were redder and puffier (I stopped my brain from telling me the ratios of difference). My pores, who were my worst enemies as I went through puberty, were now invisible, even to my new overly perceptive eyes. Then, of course, there was the shininess. My brain told me it wouldn't be terribly noticeable to a normal person's eyes, that they would just think I had some great lotion on like I had thought earlier in the day. To my eyes, though, it was like tight leather that had been heavily polished with oil. I could see rainbows dancing across my skin as I moved my hand slowly in front of my face.

In a last ditch effort, I decided I would scrub my skin raw if I had to in order to prove to myself that I wasn't a completely changed person. I would probably know for sure then that I was psychotic, but at least I would still be myself.

Once in the shower I washed my hair with Charlie's Mane 'n Tail shampoo and scrubbed my body with his generic bar soap until the water started to cool down. I stared at the shower head the entire time, avoiding looking at myself, hoping my skin was red and not the least bit shiny. Trying to ignore that my skin didn't feel at all raw from my vigorous scrubbing, I calculated that the shower head was producing five gallons of water per minute. I should probably talk Charlie into buying a new one to conserve water. Even people-eating bird girls can be environmentalists.

I wrapped a towel around my body and walked to my bedroom, still avoiding looking at myself. I closed my bedroom door and kept my back to it and the full length mirror hanging on it. Deep down I knew what I was going to see when I turned around, but stalling just seemed appropriate in a horror movie, 'don't look now the monster is behind you,' kind of way.

I loosened the towel and turned around. Yep, there I was, sparkling like some freaking fancy faerie princess. The moisture from my shower made me shine even brighter. I grunted in disgust as I turned to grab my sweats from my dresser. They felt soft, but too warm. I pulled on a t-shirt and shorts instead and went downstairs to wait for Charlie to get home.

I sat on the couch in the quiet, wondering if I was going crazy. It was the most logical explanation I could think of. The back of my brain, in the meantime, counted every tuft of carpet in the living room (1,001,341). I wondered what time it was, and the back of my brain let me know that it was five-thirty. Thanks, brain.

Hoping to distract myself, I went to the kitchen to start making dinner, so it would be ready when Charlie came home. I opened the fridge and looked inside with a frown. To the right of the top shelf sat the milk Charlie had set out and put up for me at breakfast, and to the left of the bottom shelf was a six pack of vitamin R. There was nothing below it. There was nothing in the drawers or the shelves in the door, not so much as an egg.

I slowly shut the door and then opened the freezer, not daring to hope for anything more than frozen dinners. At the bottom was a paper sack. Looking inside I saw breading, the kind I remembered Harry Clearwater giving us for frying fish during my summer visits. It was thoroughly crusted with ice.

I closed the freezer and turned to the cabinets. It didn't take me long to look through them, because they only held Charlie's coffee and my cereal. Unable to use cooking as a distraction, I pulled the box down and went to sit at the table, trying to come up with a good course of action.

If Charlie found out what was going on, or at least what I thought was going on, he would probably drag me to a top secret government bunker where scientists would do tests on me. That thought didn't really do Charlie justice. Maybe he'd drag me to Antarctica where I couldn't hurt anyone, and he'd search for a 'cure.' If I were honest with myself for once, he would most likely drag me to a loony bin to keep me from hurting myself.

Whatever the case, his response would involve dragging me away from Forks, away from Edward. My chest burned, and I felt ridiculous. Didn't I have more important things to worry about than swooning over some boy? True, he was one amazingly good looking boy, who seemed to have surgically removed my heart while I was busy trying not to eat him, but still, he should be the least of my concerns right now.

I heard the cruiser pull up, and Charlie was quickly through the door. "Bells?" he called loudly.

"In here," I called back. I tried to smile at him when he walked into the kitchen, but I was afraid it came out more like a grimace.

"There you are. Why are you sitting around in the dark?" I didn't even realize the sun had set.

Charlie flipped on the light, and started to walk toward me for a hug, but slowed when he looked at me closely. Instead he reached one hand to rub circles on my back like he used to when I (frequently) fell and skinned my knees. He sat in the chair next to me and looked me square in the eyes.

I remembered my dilated pupils and worried for a moment if they were still as large as they were earlier. Couldn't some drugs make people's eyes dilate? My brain started to list them and I silently told it to shut up. Surely Charlie would know I wasn't into that kind of stuff. Hopefully, he would just think it was from sitting in the dark.

"Is there anything you want to talk about?" His words were calm, but he looked like I was about to ask him how babies were made.

I knew I should probably tell him about my little predicament before something disastrous happened, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. "Dad, why isn't there any food in the house?"

He glanced at the box of cereal in front of me and I lifted an eyebrow. "I know how you like to cook, and I didn't know whether or not you were still on that vegetarian kick. I just thought you'd like to get groceries yourself. " His eyes narrowed and he scrutinized my face. I shifted, wondering what he was thinking. "Why, are you hungry?"

What kind of question was that? It was dinner time. Of course I was hungry. Okay, if I really thought about it, all I wanted was a giant bloody piece of meat, preferably fresh. I didn't want to go there. "I didn't have much to eat at lunch."

"We can go to the diner if you want."

I shrugged, "I'm good with my O's. What about you, though?"

He smiled. "I'm fine. I grazed all day at work." He had told me before that the dispatchers and some of the other single ladies at the station liked to bring in food most days. Charlie was rarely hungry when dinner time rolled around.

He went upstairs to shower and I poured my cereal, even though it didn't sound appetizing. I put a spoonful in my mouth, my mind distracted, and I promptly spit it out, spraying the table with crunched O's and milk. It tasted how I thought sawdust and rotten eggs should taste. I looked at the cereal box first. The expiration date was more than a year in the future, which in itself was disturbing. What kind of preservatives do they put in that junk? The milk still had a week to go.

I tried to remember what it tasted like this morning. The O's seemed a little stale maybe, the milk tasteless, but neither seemed spoilt. I sighed. I knew what I was really hungry for and it wasn't in any box. I poured the milk out in the sink and threw the carton away with the box of cereal in case it wasn't just me.

I went to the living room and turned on the television, but I couldn't focus. Charlie came down soon and asked if I minded if he changed the channel. I handed him the remote without a word and he started flipping through the channels. The back of my brain noted that he would stop for a couple of seconds each time a sport of some kind was showing, but then would continue flipping through. I wondered if there was any reading I could get a jump on for school, but I had left my bag in the truck and I didn't feel like going to get it.

We spent several hours silent on the couch. Charlie surfed the channels without ever stopping long enough to actually watch much of one thing, and I tried not to think about walking out of the house and eating the first person I came across. Every once in a while I would turn to look at Charlie in the flashing of the TV and would see a sparkle as if he had a little piece of glitter caught on a hair or by his cheek. I vaguely wondered what Charlie was doing with body glitter, but I was mostly just glad he didn't seem appetizing. Eventually I realized it must be getting late and my brain informed me it was several minutes past midnight.

I was surprised I didn't feel tired and that Charlie was still wide awake. Trying to be as normal as possible, I stretched my arms and faked a yawn. "Man, I'm bushed. Shouldn't you be turning in too?" The sooner he went to bed, the sooner I could sneak out.

Charlie turned to look at me, letting the channel rest on a shopping channel. He narrowed his eyes like he knew I was hiding something and shrugged. "Guess so," he turned off the TV and headed to his room, "'Night Bells."

"Goodnight Dad." I listened for his door to shut before going upstairs to my own room.

I impatiently waited for Charlie to settle in for the night, and let myself count all of the threads in my comforter, then my sheets, and then my pillowcases. This only took seconds, so I decided to count sheep. When I got to a million I listened carefully to see if I could hear any sounds from Charlie's room below me.

I only heard deep, even breaths, so I walked to my window and slid it open. I stepped to the side and took off my clothes. I closed my eyes, held my breath, and thought about being a swan. I felt the same strange threading sensation I had felt the previous night, but now it calmed me. When I opened my eyes, my point of view was much closer to the ground. I tried to sigh in delight, and it came out as a trill, which delighted me even more.

I waddled back to the window and hopped onto the sill. I launched myself into the night and the rain, letting the wind gusts toss me about for a while, giddy with my freedom. Soon, though, I felt the tug on my chest take precedence and I needed to find Edward. My avian brain didn't bother to think ahead to what would happen when I actually found him; I only knew I had to be wherever he was.

The tug was strong tonight, even stronger now than it had been the previous night before I met Edward. I could tell, however, that the source was much more distant. It didn't matter to me if he was at the end of the world, I would still go to him.

I took off, ignoring my hunger and pushing myself as hard as I could, averaging about one hundred and sixty miles per hour according to my brain's calculations, and I learned to use wind currents and swoops to my advantage. However, it was all in vain. After three hours he was still at least a thousand miles ahead of me. He was driving as fast as I was flying, fleeing Forks and me. He really was going to the end of the world. It would probably be in his best interest to stay there. The moment I understood this, I felt frustration at his loss and I gave up my flight in order to feed.

I had spent too much energy on my fruitless journey and the emotions of the day had drained me too, so I circled, hunting for large game. I spotted a caribou trying to cross a highway by a curve in the road. A car was about a hundred yards away, but I knew the bull wouldn't get across and the car wouldn't have time to stop. Feeling like I was doing the world a favor by preventing the inevitable wreck, I dived down at top speed, like a white, feathered, heat-seeking missile.

I widened my beak inches from the bull's neck and slammed into him with a force that instantly snapped his neck and crushed his spinal cord. The impetus caused me to swing over his back, wings flapping while I momentarily wished I had hands to grab on to the caribou whose body was now sliding into the forest behind me, rapidly rushing towards the trees.

I prayed that we wouldn't end up smashed into a trunk. Even though I knew I wouldn't die if I were slammed between the five hundred and sixteen pound corpse and a tree, I also knew it wouldn't tickle. Several minutes and many broken branches later, we finally ground to a stop half a mile from the road.

I loosened my jaw's death grip from his neck and hopped away, hoping his blood hadn't cooled too much during the ride. I fluffed my feathers and concentrated on slowing my racing heart before I turned back to him.

I made quick work of the bull, and had eaten most of his flesh, before I decided that any more might weigh me down too much for me to make good time on my flight home. I still felt my never-ceasing hunger, but at least I had regained my energy. I hoped the wolves that were circling us now would be satisfied with my leftovers. They had been attracted early on by the smell of blood and death but had stopped several yards away when they sensed a more dangerous predator than themselves.

I made a running start and climbed into the air, but I soon came across a stream and landed in the water to rinse as much blood from my feathers and beak as I could. I needed to be a clean monster. Luckily I had managed to keep all but my head and neck from getting splattered, so it only took me a few dunks to feel satisfied.

I continued my flight home and the time passed slowly. With every mile I flew away from Edward the pain in my chest increased exponentially. I swooped into my bedroom window, wishing I hadn't wasted my time chasing him because now all I wanted was to crawl into my bed and sleep for a week. Unfortunately, before I could even look at my clock to see what time it was, its incredibly obnoxious alarm went off. It was time to get ready for school.

Charlie was already gone by the time I made it downstairs, but there was cash on the table with a note for me to buy whatever groceries I wanted after school. He had left me some coffee in the pot, and I poured it graciously. It tasted odd, too bitter and too sweet at the same time, but it wasn't terrible and it gave me just enough energy to drag my unwilling body out the front door and to my truck.

The morning passed in a haze of indifference and achiness. The most exciting thing that happened was when Mr. Varner asked me a question in Trig, and even though I wasn't paying attention, my mouth dropped open and the correct answer fell out. He grimaced in surprise before he turned back to the board. Also, I realized that over-enthusiastic Mike was in my English class when he insisted on walking me to my next class. Yippee.

When Jessica and I walked into the cafeteria for lunch, I avoided looking at the Cullens' table, knowing that there was no possible way Edward could have made it back to Forks in time without a private jet and a miracle. Even though I wasn't looking, I could still feel four laser stares following me through the lunch line.

I grabbed a soda, wishing it would make me jumpy and hyper the way it would have not too long ago, but knowing it would just give me a momentary boost. My dear friend Mike corralled Jessica and me to his table before we could sit with her usual group. She was thrilled. I was exhausted.

I quickly downed my soda and laid my head down on my crossed arms. Jessica was rambling on about something, and as long as I gave a noncommittal grunt when she paused, she didn't care that I wasn't physically indicating any attention. For several minutes, I tried to stop my thoughts and shut down my senses, but my brain and body ignored me.

I could hear every shift, every sigh and every word coming from the table in the corner. The words were actually very few, but they seemed to be imbued with importance.

"Is she looking at us?" Jasper whispered.

"No," the small girl, responded, bored.

"She's listening, Alice" Jasper stated after several minutes of silence.

"There's no way she can hear us," a deep voice chastised. I assumed it was the large boy.

"We can't know that for sure," Jasper whispered even more quietly.

Suddenly, I heard a loud crack. It probably wasn't even heard by most of the students in the room, but because I was listening so intently, it sounded like a gunshot to my oversensitive ears. My head snapped up and I looked to the corner.

Alice was staring straight back at me, the two halves of her tray dangling from her tiny hands. Her look told me that it was my fault. Everything was my fault; the tray, her family's uneasiness, the disappearance of her brother, and somehow she knew it.

The blonde girl stood up and glared at Alice, furious. "I'm not going to let some inconsequential little nobody affect my life and you shouldn't either."

Jasper looked at her calmly. "Are you referring to the new girl or Edward?"

She sneered at him before walking away from the table, leaving her untouched salad behind her. The large boy turned to Jasper and shrugged, then grabbed both his and his girlfriend's trays before following her, dumping their food in the trash on the way out.

Alice was still staring at me, frustrated, as if she were trying to force me to do something, but I had no idea what she wanted from me. Jasper gently took the broken tray from her and held one of her hands. She finally looked to him with a frown before they both stood and left the room.

I let out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding and put my head back down until the bell rang for class.

I walked with Angela again to Biology where I sat at my lonely table. Time crept by and when class was over, Mike walked me to P.E. again. I can't pretend it wasn't expected. I spent the walk avoiding letting him put his arm around me. At first I tried to be subtle in my aversion, but eventually I just glared at his arm as it inched in my direction.

If I could have found the ability to care I might have been terrified that we were playing volleyball, but I just zoned out and let my body go on autopilot. This was probably the best decision I had made all day, because I didn't have an opportunity to panic when the ball came to me; my hands just snaked out and bounced or slapped it to the other side of the court.

At the end of class, the coach pulled me aside and asked if I had played on the varsity or junior varsity team at my old school. When I looked at him blankly, he continued on and asked if I planned on trying out for the varsity team in the fall. Normally, I would have laughed, but instead I just assured him that I was really a klutz, and he would be much better off if I weren't allowed on any court. He didn't believe me but let me leave anyway.

Once I changed out of my gym clothes, I walked to my truck and noticed that the Cullens and Hales were climbing into the silver Volvo I had noticed the day before. Of course they were rich: The world was not a fair place. I shook my head and started the truck; it might not be flashy, but it had personality.

I headed to the Thriftway. Nothing seemed appetizing. In the produce section, the fruit smelled so sickeningly sweet that I gagged. In the end, I just bought some less fragrant vegetables, a lot of red meat, and several caffeinated beverages.

Once home, I put away the groceries, set steaks up to marinate, and put potatoes in the oven to bake, hoping that putting some effort into the night's meal might make it taste better than cardboard. I went upstairs and decided to check my e-mail for a distraction.

There were several messages from Renee. I opened the first one. Its date stamp showed that I had just left Arizona two hours before she wrote, and I wondered what she could possibly have needed to say.

Bella, Please write as soon as you can. I love you. I've always just wanted to protect you, I swear. Mom. 

I frowned and opened her next message.

Why haven't you e-mailed me? Do you hate me? I'm sorry. Please let me explain. Mom.

I opened the last message which was written just a few hours ago.

If I haven't heard from you by 5:30 p.m. today I'm calling Charlie. He's as much to blame as I am, I don't care what he says.

It was just like Renee to over-react and make random assumptions. I didn't want to deal with a phone call, so I responded via e-mail.

Mom, Calm down. Everything is fine. What are you talking about? Of course I don't hate you; I've just been busy settling in. My first day of classes went okay, thanks for asking. They should be easy this semester. I'll write again when I have more to say, but until then, relax. Tell Phil I said hi. Love, Bella.

I decided to read Wuthering Heights for English again for the umpteenth time. It took less than fifteen minutes for me to finish, and when I started to read it for a second time I realized that I had memorized it with the first read. While I thought this new ability could come in handy, it was seriously going to put the kibosh on my main source for alleviating boredom.

I went back to my computer and decided to read about swans. Most of what I read didn't apply to me. I already knew that my speed and strength were greater and that my eating habits were a bit different, but I absorbed the information because I had nothing better to do. I eventually came to a listing in the search engine for a site devoted to stories and myths about swans. Before I could click on it, I heard Charlie pull up.

I ran downstairs to pop the steaks under the broiler.

"In the kitchen again?" Charlie asked from behind me.

"Yeah. I got groceries. Hope you're in the mood for steak and potatoes."

He smiled tightly at me. "Always."

We sat down to eat, but after a couple of bites I wished I could think of a valid and non-threatening reason to get out of finishing dinner. The steak, though rare, was not nearly fresh enough and was far too cooked for me. I wished it were mooing. The potatoes might as well have actually been dirt. I hadn't even tried the salad I'd tossed together, and I wasn't planning to either.

Charlie was cutting his food into very small pieces when he asked "How are your classes? Make any friends?"

I snorted. "There's a girl named Jessica who's been really nice. There's a boy named Mike you might need to put the fear of God into, though."

Charlie finally looked at me, his eyes crinkling in the corners. "Ah, the Newton boy. He is a little excitable, isn't he? Don't worry, he's harmless."

I began to cut my food into microscopic pieces too, hoping that I could swallow smaller bites without actually tasting them.

"Dad, do you know anything about the Cullen family?" His knife stopped scraping on his plate, and I looked at him. His eyes were narrowed in thought and his head was tilted.

"I've met Dr. Cullen briefly before, but I've only seen the rest of the family from afar. Why?"

"The five kids seem…" I couldn't bring myself to say different. I'd probably choke on the irony. "Reclusive?"

He nodded and looked back down to my plate. "I can see that. They make some folks uneasy." He looked at me again with a smile. "Of course some folks say the same about your old man." He winked. "I'm sure they'll continue to keep to themselves."

That night I tried to stay in my room in human form. Lying in my bed, unable to sleep, I wrapped my arms around myself to try to dull the ache in my chest. It didn't help, but it probably kept me from completely falling apart when the shaking began.

At first it was just a slight tremor, just a shiver like I had been subject to a light breeze even though it was stuffy in my room. The tremor became constant then intensified. It continued to escalate until I was bouncing in my bed. After an hour the bed frame had shifted several inches with my movement. My temperature kept shifting between burning hot and freezing cold, and tears were streaming from my eyes. I gave up.

I jumped out of bed and wrenched my window open. Without thinking I launched myself out into the open air… and promptly face dived into the dirt two stories below me. It didn't hurt, but it did knock the air out of me and I was stunned into stillness.

I heard wings flapping as someone landed near me. I turned my head and saw an owl. If my newly perfect memory wasn't failing me like my body just had, then I was pretty sure it was the same owl from the first night I turned into a swan. He was always catching me at my worst.

"Shoo," I hissed at him.

He just hooted at me. Why did I think this creature was intimidating before?

I sat up and brushed myself off, and he hopped a few feet away from me, still watching me warily. I decided to ignore him, and after verifying that there weren't any people about, I stepped behind the tree nearest the house and closed my eyes.

When I opened them I was closer to Owl's height and could see him more clearly. There was an intelligence in his expression that I had missed in my human form, even with my superior eyesight. I wondered if I would feel this way about all animals or just other birds.

I flew away from Owl and flew around Forks until I found an unfrozen pond. Several frogs met untimely ends before I waded into the fog covering the pond. It was calming and I managed to doze while I floated. 

I woke when the sky was beginning to lighten, but the sun was still far from rising. I flew back to my house and into my window and managed to turn off the alarm clock before it had a chance to go off.

The rest of the week dragged by in a repetitive cycle: classes without wrong answers, dinners without taste, and nights with feathers. Edward did not come back to school. The pull on my chest told me he was still a couple thousand miles away. I didn't blame him.

Lunch time was the only bright spot in my day, but only because I was still listening to the corner table. They said little and nothing of importance, at least until Friday.

At lunch on Friday I sat between Jessica and Mike again as had become routine. My head rested on my crossed arms and I was grunting at the pauses in Jessica's inane chatter, when I realized she hadn't continued her story after the last pause. In fact, the whole table had fallen silent. I lifted my head to find out the reason for the quiet. Had they actually realized that lunchtime was for eating?

The first person I saw should have been on the other side of the room from me, not three feet across the table. Alice stared at me, her teeth gritted in a fake smile. Her sharp little fingers were clasped around a bottle of water.

"You're Bella, right?"

I nodded my head down, once.

"I'm Alice." Her teeth stayed clench, and her mouth barely moved as she spoke.

I nodded again.

"My family and I would like to speak to you for a moment, if you don't mind." She didn't give me an opportunity to respond before she stood up and walked back to her table. I rose to follow her, and Jessica's hand was suddenly wrapped around my wrist in a grip so tight that it should have hurt. I heard a panicked scream and looked around, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I turned back to Jessica and she whispered, "You are coming back, right?"

Her eyes were desperate as she looked up at me. "Of course. I'll just be a moment."

She forced a smile and I peeled her fingers off of me. I walked to the Cullens' table and Alice indicated the seat between Jasper and the large brother. He stuck his meaty hand out, and I tentatively shook it with my own. I heard a chuckle as he said "I'm Emmett."

"Bella Swan."

From my other side a familiar Southern accent stated, "And I'm Jasper."

I turned to him with a small smile. "Hello."

The blonde girl didn't even look at me. She was staring across the room at a girl's knee high boots. Her focus let me know where I ranked in her book.

I sat and looked to Alice.

The smile was gone, but she still barely moved her lips as she spoke. "We've got you figured out."

I looked at her, surprised, but I knew my face would appear blank to her. I didn't have me figured out, what could she know?

Emmett chortled. "Subtle, Al. Real subtle."

"What I'm sure Alice meant to say…" Jasper started in.

"No, I meant exactly what I said," Alice said, leaning towards me across the table. "Stay away from my family, especially my brother."

My body responded, leaning towards her in return as a growl built in my throat. I felt Jasper's hand on my arm as I glared into her eyes and I heard him whisper, "Be calm."

I felt a wave of peace flow over me, but I ignored it. I also felt certain suddenly that Alice was bluffing. She knew nothing about me. I almost regretted this. It would be nice to have some insight. I jerked my arm away as I turned my gaze to him. "Don't tell me what to do," I bit out. We were inches apart and I could see my eyes reflected in his. My pupils were large again and as I watched, Jasper's eyes darkened and narrowed, readying for a fight. My lips pulled back over my teeth as I turned back to Alice.

"I couldn't care a flying fig less about your family or your brother. Leave me alone and stay out of my way." I stood and went back to Jessica who looked at me gratefully as I sat. I didn't look back at the corner table, but I could feel their angry stares.

That evening as Charlie and I said goodnight, he informed me that he would be working most of the weekend and would probably be gone before I even woke up in the morning, but he should be home before dark. I nodded and told him I would just be unpacking and maybe I would make a visit to the library.

In reality, I was already making plans. My brain was calculating how long it would take Charlie to fall asleep, how long it would take me to fly to the North pole or wherever Edward was, how long it would take to fly back, and if I could possibly make it before Charlie would get home.

I had no idea what I would do if I found Edward, but I had to try. If nothing else I had to at least look at him one last time. Luckily, I was so busy plotting that the minutes went by quickly, and soon I was out my window and soaring through the air. I let the tug lead me, and instead of going back over the forest and into Canada like I had on Tuesday, it led me to the coast and over the Gulf of Alaska.

After six hours of flying, my hunger had become a gnawing pang. I ignored it and pressed on. I was still almost a hundred miles away from land to get the best headwind, and I had no intention of going deep sea fishing for dinner; although, even shark sounded good at the time.

Three and a half hours later I finally landed. From the air I had seen a house about ten miles away, but right now I was in the middle of nowhere, and I could feel that Edward was at the bottom of the embankment twenty yards away. I wondered briefly if I should eat something before I saw him, but I was impatient and figured that I could stay far enough away from him that he could run if I lost control. It was a lame excuse, but I was desperate to see him.

I could hear him whispering, but I was still too far away to make out his words. I finally reached the edge of the drop off and could see him lying in the snow. He was glorious, of course. His skin glowed like moonstone in the starlight, and the coppery glints in his hair stood out against the white of the snow. Unfortunately, I also saw why he was whispering.

A goddess was stretched on her side next to him. She was all curves, and long legs, and strawberry blonde curls. She whispered back to him and I was too distracted by her voice to comprehend her words. Her voice was thick and luxurious like fresh cream and had a hint of an Eastern European accent. She was gorgeous, and exotic, and absolutely everything I was not.

I wanted to laugh at myself. All along I had thought that Edward had run to the end of the world to get away from me, and while that might have been partially true, the most important reason he ran was right beside him. He probably wouldn't even remember I existed anymore, not when he had her whispering sweet nothings in his ears.

I was about to turn away when he spoke again. "You're a thousand times lovelier than the stars, Tanya."

That was it, I had to leave. I scurried away like a cockroach, thinking I was a fool for coming to Alaska, and a greater fool for ever thinking the boy could feel anything but hate for me. I tried to tell myself that at least I knew now that I didn't stand a chance, and I could just leave him alone. I was such a liar.

I knew I needed to find some sustenance before my long flight home and I sniffed the wind to find out where the nearest moose or bear might be. The first scent I found was strawberry ice cream and lust. I knew it had to be the goddess.

She was behind me before I could turn around, and I honked in surprise. She stopped near me, and I twisted to look up at her. She was shocked to see me too. The shock turned into calculation on her face.

"No, it couldn't be…" she muttered. She started to walk to me, her hand outstretched.

I froze, wondering if she always felt compelled to pet wild animals. Who did she think she was, Snow White? Angry at the beautiful girl, I spread my wings, and stretched my neck to make me look taller as I hissed at her. I expected her to run, or scream, or faint. Instead, she hunched into a crouch and hissed at me in return. She looked like a valkyrie with her curls dancing in the wind against the starry night. She was full of surprises.

We postured for a moment until I felt embarrassed for trying to antagonize her. I wasn't going to eat Edward's girlfriend, so why bother trying to scare her?

I dropped my head and twisted back to continue on my journey away from her, when she called out, "Wait!"

I knew she wouldn't be talking to me, but I turned to her anyway. She was walking towards me with her hand outstretched again. She ran her hand down my neck and I heard her whisper "take it" though her lips didn't seem to move.

She moved her hand away from me, and I looked at her again, our eyes meeting. I didn't know what she meant, but I suddenly had an urge to open my mouth and breathe her in. I closed my eyes, and in my head I imagined her turning into a million shimmering particles that I in turn inhaled. Her strawberry and cream taste flowed down my throat, coating it like an elixir. My stomach filled with her and I felt satisfied for the first time since I came to Forks. She moaned and I shivered. I needed a nap and maybe a cigarette.

She chuckled and spoke aloud. "This is going to be fun." Her voice was husky and drowsy and I would have laughed in return if I could. When I opened my eyes again, she was gone.

I had no idea what exactly had happened, but I had the energy to take to the air and fly back home without stopping. It was five o'clock in the afternoon when I flew through my window, and I still felt fantastic. When Charlie came home later he commented on my good mood. Thinking about Edward with the girl couldn't even dampen my spirits.

On Sunday my mood improved even further as the tugging on my chest eased. At first I tried to convince myself that I was just getting over the loss of Edward. My brain, however, told me that Edward was on his way home. I tried not to feel relieved, but I couldn't help myself. I told myself I could still avoid him at school, and that I was just going to be glad that the tugging would lessen. If I was going to continue to lie to myself, I really needed to take some acting lessons.

* * *

**E/N: Please review!**


	4. Chapter 4 Ghosts of Bella's Past

A/N: Thanks so much to Project Team Beta for sharing their mad skillz. Also, and I should have said this long ago, thanks a million to mbluvsdarkedward for starting a thread on the twi forum. This crazy mess goes out to you ;-)

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. In other words, I do not own Twilight.

* * *

Chapter 4-Ghosts of Bella's Past

When I parked in my usual spot Monday morning, several people were already waiting for me. Jessica and Mike were there, of course, as were Eric, Angela, and a few people who usually ate lunch with us. I was beginning to worry that my ever-growing entourage might further jeopardize my efforts to remain inconspicuous.

I avoided looking in the direction of the silver Volvo across the lot, but I could feel five pairs of eyes watching me today, instead of the four pairs I had grown accustomed to. I took a breath and squared my shoulders, as if I were headed in to battle, and nodded my head to Mike for him to lead the way to English.

As soon as class began, Mr. Mason announced a pop quiz on Wuthering Heights. I groaned along with everyone else, so no one would know that I was destined to be the bell curve slayer. I made sure to time my answers with the pencil scratching I heard around me. It was possible no one would notice if I finished when everyone else was still on the first question, but I didn't want to take any chances. Pretending to be normal was practically a distraction unto itself.

As we left the building after class, Mike held the door open for me and a fresh breeze swirled around us carrying a crisp, clean scent: snow. My mind held a memory of the scent, though I had never even seen actual snow in real life, at least not as a human. I ran outside, grinning. I could hear Mike laughing behind me.

"Guess you haven't been around snow much?"

I turned and smiled at him, excited. He laughed again and I tilted my head back to watch the cottony clumps of flakes drifting down from the wispy, light gray clouds above us. I closed my eyes and stuck out my tongue to catch one. I heard a woman's sultry laugh from a few feet away, and I opened my eyes.

She was standing where Mike had just been, hands on her hips, and a hungry smile curved her mouth. The chestnut colored waves of her waist-length hair danced in the breeze. For some reason, she was wearing a toga while the snow swirled around her, but she looked so divine in it that it didn't seem inappropriate. Her eyes were black orbs, but I knew they would normally be the same chocolate brown as mine. Her full lips didn't move as I heard her lovely and familiar voice echo in my mind, "Shall we feast, sister?"

Mystified, I looked around us. The school buildings were all gone, as were the trees of the nearby forest. There were no cars, no students, even the parking lot was gone. Instead, we were in the middle of a snow covered field, and all around us armored men lay dead or dying. The man nearest me was moaning and pleading in a language I no longer remembered. His blood seeped from him, staining the snow a blatant and appetizing red. My mouth filled with saliva as my stomach clenched.

"Bella?" Mike sounded terrified as he called my name, and the vision faded before me. My eyes stayed wide, staring after it.

"Are you okay? You look like you've just seen a ghost!" I nodded my head.

Mike grabbed my arm and I could feel concern radiating from him. I made eye contact with him and felt remorse for once for my behavior towards him. He wasn't a bad guy, just enthusiastic. I caught movement from Eric who was standing behind Mike a few yards away.

"Hey!" Mike shouted as a large snowball splattered into the back of his head. He turned, but Eric was already loping away. Mike was still bending down to make his own snowball in retaliation against the lanky boy. I tried to laugh, but I sounded like I was choking.

Mike looked up at me, worried again. "Hey, girl, you're shaking like crazy. Maybe you should go on to class and get out of the cold."

I nodded at him. "I'll see you at lunch," I managed to whisper.

He nodded back and watched me as I skittered away.

I spent the rest of the morning analyzing the vision, trying to remember how I was acquainted with the woman. While I watched her, I had felt like I had known her all of my life, but when I replayed the memory, I became more and more certain I had never seen her before. I was also disturbed by the corpses and my subsequent hunger, but I knew focusing on that would only lead to trouble, and quite possibly murder and mayhem.

Mike met Jessica and me as we left Spanish, and the two of them flicked snow at each other as we walked to the cafeteria. Luckily, they were able to sense that I wasn't up for a snow fight.

I slowed and finally stopped a few feet from the cafeteria doors. I could feel that Edward was inside already, and I took a deep breath. Maybe I was just imagining it, or maybe it was more noticeable to me because I had yearned for him all week, but I could taste his scent on the air even before we walked inside. It was bound to be a long lunch hour.

Jess and Mike had their heads tilted, watching me like confused puppies. I waved my hand to indicate that they should go in first, and they shrugged before walking through the doors. I followed slowly behind them, trying to keep Mike's shoulders between my line of sight and the Cullens' table. Sometimes being on the short side comes in handy.

We walked through the line and Jessica looked at me in disapproval as I only grabbed a soda. "Bella, aren't you hungry? I never see you eat."

I almost snorted. She definitely didn't want to see me eat. "I'll be fine, Jess. I'm just not big on cafeteria food."

As we sat, I tried to engross myself in the conversation at my table, and to not eavesdrop on the Cullens, though they seemed to be especially quiet at the time, so I probably wouldn't have heard much anyways. My brain protested this maneuver as Lauren, a pale haired girl whose every condescending word dripped spite, told us about her shopping trip to Seattle over the weekend. She ate up the attention and glared at anyone who tried to interrupt her epic tale.

She continued to eat, even as she droned on, and I watched her dull, little teeth pull a bite off of her slice of pizza. She spoke around her food, and I could see a lump of saliva coated goo tucked into her cheek like she was an overgrown chipmunk. I'd eaten a chipmunk a couple of days before, and I wasn't impressed. I thought Lauren would probably taste like a cross between chipmunk and rat, but there was only one way to know for sure.

I contemplated whether or not I could inhale Edward's luscious scent from across the room, and pretend it was Lauren's, the way my mother had told me to imagine a donut when she served me brussel sprouts as a child. If so, I was sure the student body (or at least the female portion of the population) would give me a standing ovation as I chomped down on her. Of course, that meant I would have to actually touch Lauren, when it was already hard for me just to be within a few feet of her; but sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the betterment of society.

Lauren's words trailed off as she realized I was sizing her up. Her face turned a violent shade of red as she sniped "What? You like what you see, Swan?"

I smiled, my eyes still narrowed at her, and sipped my soda. Her face darkened further and I lowered the can. "Not particularly. Please continue with your story."

She glared at me a moment longer before turning away from me, shifting her body to indicate her dismissal of me. She attempted to continue to bore the other denizens of our table, but the boys had started talking about movies while she was distracted.

I heard a giggle on my other side and turned to see Angela covering her mouth. She glanced at Lauren, and then looked back to me, lowering her hand to reveal a smile as if to say she understood what I was up to. I smiled back, willing her to believe that I had goaded Lauren as a silly, teenaged antic, and not out of hungry malevolence.

Somewhere in me I knew it was wrong of me to think of my classmate as food, but between my earlier vision and Edward's enticing aroma, I just couldn't rouse enough humanity in myself to care. I was fairly certain I wouldn't act out on my fantasies, and in a way, I hoped allowing myself to mentally indulge at the lunch table would keep me from mentally (and then physically) attacking Edward in Biology.

I heard a flurry of whispers from across the room and heard a velveteen voice whisper both mine and Lauren's names and something about Sapphic delights. Masculine chuckles erupted from the Cullens' table, so I shifted my eyes to them and watched as Emmett gave me the thumbs up, Jasper nodded his head to me with a smile, and Edward slyly smirked as if he had read my thoughts, or undressed me with his crafty eyes, or perhaps even both at the same time.

I pulled my ravenous gaze away from him to check the expressions of his sisters. Rosalie looked bored as she studied her fingernails. Somehow, this comforted me; it was what I expected of Rosalie. Alice, on the other hand, was being completely disconcerting. I had grown accustomed to her glares over the past week, but today the evil, little nymph watched me with a thoughtful and conniving smile.

"Bella?" Jessica caught my attention with her concern. I turned to her and she glanced in the direction I had been staring, then gasped.

"Bella," she sighed in awe. "Edward Cullen is staring at you!"

I rolled my eyes but she didn't see. "Jessica," I was trying to break his spell on her, now.

As she continued to stare, a boiling river of possessiveness began to seethe through me. I leaned forward so that my lips were almost touching her ear as I growled at her: "Jessica. Stop. Looking."

She finally turned back to me, leaning away so our noses wouldn't touch, since I wasn't giving her any space. Her eyes were wide as she slowly nodded in acquiescence. I knew she would never look at Edward again if she could possibly avoid it.

"Hey, ladies! What do you think about a snowball war after school?"

I jerked my gaze away from Jess and looked to the ceiling. Rain pattered against the roof and I was amazed Mike didn't hear it. "You do know it's started raining, right?"

Mike's face fell and he looked more like a wounded puppy than ever. "What?"

I smiled sadly at him. "Sorry, Mike. Maybe next time."

I did my best to contribute to the conversation for the rest of the lunch period, and I managed not to look at Edward or his siblings again. I was beginning to feel that I could actually go to Biology and behave like a normal girl. I hardly spoke or looked at most of the kids who sat next to me in my other classes, so surely I could treat Edward the same way and we would both survive the class.

I followed Mike and Angela into the classroom, and saw that my table was still empty; I felt a pang as I wondered if Edward had been successful in having his schedule changed after all. Mr. Banner was walking around the room, placing worksheets and microscopes on each table. I stifled a sigh; if Edward did show up we would be forced to communicate over our lab work.

I pulled out my notebook as I sat, letting my hand doodle of its own will. I concentrated on tracking Edward's movement, curious how accurately I could gauge his nearness by the pull in my chest. My concentration was ruined when his sweet and spicy bouquet invaded my senses; I breathed it in, and my heart rate climbed.

My head lifted and I reverently watched the doorway. In a moment, he strode through boldly, and I nearly swooned off of my stool. I quickly looked down to my notebook and gasped; while I was distracted, my hand had been busy drawing the ethereal face of the woman from my dream, surrounded by delicate snowflakes.

"Your eyes are wider, and your chin is a tad narrower," a luscious voice whispered into my ear.

I swiftly turned my face to meet Edward's gaze; I couldn't remember if his eyes were golden before or not, and I gaped at him long enough to wonder why he hadn't looked away, or at least blinked. I dropped my eyes to break our contact, but they landed on his lips. They were redder than I recalled, perhaps from the cold everyone else seemed to feel, and they were a scant four inches from my own.

"It's not supposed to be me," I blurted, desperate to say anything to keep me from pressing my mouth to his.

His thick brows drew together; "Isn't it?" He crookedly smiled, then continued; "I meant no offense. It's a lovely drawing, though it doesn't do justice to the original."

My eyes widened as I realized that Edward Cullen was flirting with me. A week ago, he crossed international borders to get away from me, but now he was flirting with me. To top it off, I had learned that he had a stunningly gorgeous girlfriend, and yet he stood before me, dropping lines like a Victorian romance novel.

"I'm sorry I wasn't able to introduce myself last week, I'm Edward Cullen… and you're Bella Swan?"

"Yes, that's right," I responded, as if I hadn't been stalking him.

Edward moved to his seat, and I didn't want to take my eyes off of him, but Mr. Banner had started explaining the day's lab assignment. When he turned to write on the chalkboard, Mike craned his neck around to pass a look between me and Edward. He gave me a questioning grimace, and I smiled back and shrugged. I wasn't sure what Edward was thinking, but I certainly wasn't going to complain if he had somehow decided to ignore my freakish behavior of the previous week.

Edward prepared the first slide, and I watched his long, nimble fingers work; even with just the small movements necessary to clip the sample into place on the stage, I could tell that each of his actions was careful, precise and purposeful. I shivered, imagining his deft fingers against my skin, and then promptly felt ridiculous for envying a piece of onion. I sighed, wishing my imagination would keep to itself for the remainder of the class period, so that I would be less likely to do anything reckless.

Hearing my sigh, Edward turned to me with a smile, his head already bent, prepared to look through the eyepiece. A lock of his disheveled hair dropped over one eyebrow, giving his questioning glance a rakish appearance; I stifled another sigh.

"Ladies first?" he questioned, misinterpreting my sounds.

I nodded and reached for the microscope, hoping to "accidentally" graze his hands, but he pulled them away before I could. He leaned back and turned away from me, and I lowered my head to look into the microscope. I heard him sharply inhale, but when I looked at him again he was simply watching me with a smile.

"Prophase," I stated so he could write down the answer on our worksheet.

"Do you mind if I have a look?"

I nearly rolled my eyes. "Be my guest."

I pushed the microscope to him, and as he reached out, I let my pinky brush his knuckles. A delicious charge jolted through me, sending tingles down to my toes; I bit my lip against a moan. "You're still too cold," a husky voice that didn't sound at all like mine whispered through my lips.

His eyes were glued to my lips and his pink tongue darted out to moisten his own; they glistened like red glass coated in dew. I wanted so badly to touch them, to test their suppleness, but I managed to behave myself.

He turned back to the microscope and glanced in. "Prophase," he muttered and then filled in the answer.

He switched out the slides and peeked in again before stating: "Anaphase."

"May I have a look?"

I wanted to kick myself; I'd never been competitive, so why did it matter to me if he knew that I could name the phases of mitosis?

He let me pull the microscope to me and I immediately saw that he was correct. I nodded my head and mumbled: "Anaphase."

I took the slide out and held it out for him to exchange; he frowned at my hand as if he were uncertain what to do. "Next slide," I reminded him.

He adroitly took the slide from me and gave me a new one, somehow managing not to touch me at all. I pretended not to notice as I clipped the slide in place and looked at it. "Interphase."

I pushed the microscope to him, and he nodded after glancing in, and then wrote down the answer. We finished with the other slides quickly and I looked around the room. Everyone else was still staring at their microscopes, dumbfounded.

I looked at Edward, pondering whether I should start a conversation or stick to my original plan of ignoring him. He looked back, his eyes narrowed like he was puzzling over something. He opened his mouth to speak, and my body began to strain toward him to better hear.

"So, Edward, didn't you think Isabella should get a chance with the microscope?" Mr. Banner loudly asked from behind me, nearly causing me to fall out of my chair in surprise.

I grimaced and Edward's face was a blank mask, though his eyes twinkled with mirth. I pasted on my best "keep the teacher happy" smile, and turned to Mr. Banner, looking up from my seat.

"It's Bella, sir, and I identified three of the five phases. I've done this lab before, you see." I hadn't, but it sounded like a good explanation.

"Oh, were you in an advanced placement program in Phoenix?"

"Sure… I mean, yes, sir."

"Well, I guess it's good you two are lab partners." As he walked away he muttered under his breath "So the other kids can get a chance to learn something for themselves."

I was fairly certain we weren't supposed to have heard that, but I couldn't resist turning to Edward and cocking my eyebrow. A struggle crossed his face before he surrendered, and a wide grin stretched his exquisite lips.

"It's too bad about the snow, isn't it?" Edward motioned to my sketch as he spoke.

"Yes, yes it is," I answered wistfully. I couldn't believe we were talking about the weather, but of course, he didn't know I had spent the last week chasing after him over thousands of miles.

"So, you don't mind the cold?" he asked with an intensity unsuitable for the question.

I looked down at his hand on the table and remembered how chilled he always seemed, before I met his eyes again. "I love cold things; I'm always over-heated." I tried to sound casual, but knew I had failed when Edward's face suddenly stilled.

"Then you must love Forks."

I smiled at him, sadly. "As a matter of fact I do," even though it's probably responsible for turning me into a bird-girl.

"Please pardon me if I'm overstepping any boundaries, but you just moved in with Chief Swan, right?" At my nod he continued; "So why now? Why didn't you even visit in the summers?"

I considered how to best answer without sounding like a brat. "I used to visit, but my mother stopped letting me a few years ago; she was always afraid I would decide to stay here with my dad, since we've always been closer. As for why now, she recently remarried and her husband travels a lot. Her excuses for keeping me in Arizona were becoming increasingly flimsy, and I probably wasn't making her life any easier." I took a moment to regret the whining and threatening I had assailed Renee with over the past few years. She wasn't going to win any mother of the year awards any time soon, but at least she cared about me.

He nodded, but it seemed like I hadn't answered the question he was really asking. While he was distracted, I decided to surprise him with my own question.

"Why'd you decide to talk to me today, when you couldn't stand to be in the same room with me last week?"

I expected him to try to deny his previous aversion to me, but instead his eyes narrowed and a devilishly seductive grin spread across his face. "A friend told me to give you a chance."

My brain started to race, quickly dismissing the friends of his that I knew. Alice would probably tell him to poor boiling oil down my throat before she'd tell him to make nice with me. Jasper seemed like a decent fellow, but he didn't have any reason to stick up for me, especially after my last conversation with his pixie devil of a girlfriend. I didn't think his other two almost-siblings had taken that much notice of me.

He looked terribly entertained as he watched the confusion cross my face. I frowned at him, but before I could ask any more questions, Mr. Banner began speaking, illustrating what we had seen during our lab work on the overhead projector. I paid attention to Mr. Banner, and even took notes, but I allowed my mind to keep track of every one of Edward's slightest gestures.

I didn't know what to make of him, but I sincerely hoped he wouldn't run away again. When the bell rang, Edward quickly stood but waited for me to gather my belongings and followed me out into the aisle. As I reached the door I heard him whisper in my ear "See? Not running away."

I turned to him, my eyes wide at his words. Mike gently took my elbow and began to steer me to the gym as I continued to watch Edward standing in the doorway with a contented smirk.

Luckily, my body's newfound auto pilot kicked in before P.E., because I was still staring in the general direction of our biology class, even as I volleyed and served. Mike tried to get my attention several times, muttering about "Cullen" and "some nerve," but I ignored him, until he spiked the ball into the back of my head; so much for team spirit.

After I changed out of my gym clothes, I walked outside to go to my truck. As soon as I stepped out, I felt eyes on me. I looked up and my gaze automatically gravitated to the silver Volvo, where Edward was casually leaning against the door, wearing the same smirk I had last seen on him as he stared back at me.

I wondered if I was just imagining him, but then I realized that several onlookers cast glances between the two of us as they passed. I didn't realize I had stopped moving, until someone slammed into me from behind. I caught myself before I could fall, but I looked up from my bent position into the ochre eyes of Alice Cullen.

The nasty little gnome smiled innocently at me as she giggled "Whoops! Sorry, Bella!" She turned and danced to her brother, more graceful than any creature of such overwhelming hatefulness had a right to. Edward glowered down at her, but she ignored him as she swept an imaginary fleck of dust from his coat.

I turned and walked to my truck, but once I climbed in, I used the excuse of waiting for other cars to pass to continue ogling Edward in my rearview mirror. Even when he climbed into his own car, I still felt like he was watching me, too. Eventually, we were the only two student cars left in the lot, and I sighed as I finally backed out and left.

I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to take my time doing my homework, but naturally (or not) I was finished far too quickly and had several hours with nothing but my thoughts of Edward to occupy my time. When Charlie arrived home, I enthusiastically greeted him; hugging him, I grilled him about his day at work as he removed his coat and gun and then drug him to the kitchen where we discussed what kind of meat we should have for dinner.

We settled on sausage, so I got up and started cooking. Charlie asked me about my day, and I embellished some of the unimportant details, like finishing our lab first in Biology, and my team winning in P.E., while I edited out any mention of Edward.

As I sat with our plates, I realized that Charlie had not spoken for several minutes. I looked up at him with a smile, but he was frowning down at his plate. He placed a hand on my wrist but then frowned at that instead. "Bells, is there anything you want to discuss with me?"

I forced myself to smile at him, knowing he had always been able to read my expressions like an open book. "No, Dad, I'm fine!"

He looked up and searched my face, seeming to know that I was hiding something. A chill ran down my spine as I thought that eventually, he would stop accepting my non-answer. I had no idea what kind of truth I could tell him then.

"Bells, baby, you know I'm always here for you. You will always be my first priority."

His words seemed familiar to me, but even with my improved memory I couldn't immediately place them. I closed my eyes as I thought, but I still came up with nothing.

Suddenly, I heard glass crashing and women screaming; growls erupted around me like I was trapped in a lion's den. My eyes popped open as I looked back at Charlie. I wondered when (and why) he had grown mutton chops, and why I didn't remember his mustache being curled at the ends just a few minutes ago. Though the lights in the room suddenly seemed much dimmer, I could see now that my father was wearing what looked to me like a tuxedo jacket, and his hair was slickly parted in the middle.

I tore my eyes away from him as I looked around the room. We still sat at a table, but the elegant, stark white cloth under my hand was unlike anything we had ever owned. I heard screaming again and looked up: We were in an enormous room, filled with cloth covered tables, and lit by candelabra and two giant candle-covered chandeliers several stories above us.

There were many other people in the room, but we were the only ones sitting. Everyone else was either fighting, crying, or dragging women out of the ornate double doors several yards away. Somehow, despite their horrific actions, every single person struck me as being extremely beautiful.

Across from our table, two men were struggling. One man had black hair that had been slicked back but was beginning to fall over his forehead as he dodged blows from the other man. His skin had the same iridescent glow as mine and my father's, and his pale blue eyes were turning black. He wore a black tuxedo with an ivory cravat, but as I watched, the man he fought stretched two pale, skeletal hands out of the cloak he wore and tried to choke him.

I stood, panicked, and for some reason I felt protective of the blue-eyed man. The cloaked one heard me and whipped his head to face me, his burgundy eyes raking over my form. He stretched his thin lips wide in a parody of a smile, and the candlelight glinted off of his large, white teeth.

I heard my father's voice again and I turned to look at him. "No, you are the number one priority; now run, Issy, Run!"

I felt his hand tightly grip my arm, belying his spoken words, but when I looked at his arm, he was no longer wearing the tuxedo jacket, but was again clothed in his drab colored officer's uniform. My eyes travelled up to his face; his cop 'stache was no longer curled, and his sideburns were the typical, twenty-first century length I was used to. The only thing abnormal about his appearance was that his eyes were wide in terror.

"Bella? What just happened? Are you okay?"

I sunk back down into my chair, still staring at his face. I didn't know what had happened, but my brain was making some conclusions of its own. Whatever was happening to me, Charlie had something, if not everything, to do with it. I felt like an imbecile for not realizing it before, and betrayed because, obviously, Charlie was keeping some very big secrets from me.

All of my life I had thought he was more than just my father; he was my best friend, my confidante, and the one person in the world I believed I could trust implicitly. In my mind, he had surpassed the role of parental figure; he was my Charlie. Yet, all along it seemed he had kept a fundamental truth from me: we were monsters, and he always knew it.

My eyes began to burn with tears. "Tell me what's happening to me, Daddy," I whispered, wanting to remind him of his failure as a father, much less a friend.

His face turned perplexed as he perused my face. "Bella, I don't know. The change is different for everyone, but I can't read you at all, so I can't help you if you won't talk to me."

His casual response drove away my anger and I stared at him in shock. For several minutes, I attempted to speak, but only random, questioning noises came out. I didn't know where to start; after desperately keeping my secret for a week, how could I just talk about it?

Eventually, he sighed and stood to walk to the window. He pushed it open and inhaled the cool, moist air that blew in. He turned to me, and asked "Are you coming or not?"

I tilted my head and watched as he began to shrink, his bones twisting, his nose growing, sleek brown feathers pushing through his skin as he turned into Owl. He hopped out of the pile of his uniform, and with one more hop, his yellow talons gripped the window sill. He slowly turned his head so that it sat backwards on his squat little body, and his big yellow eyes blinked at me. His head turned to face forward again, and he flew out into the night.

I supposed there was nothing left to do but follow him.

* * *

E/N: So, let me know what you think! Also, if you want to know exactly what Edward's "friend" told him about Bella (before Bella finds out), visit the Twilighted thread for The Cygnet and the Strigoi or pm me here and I'll send you a link. If you want to wait to find out with Bella, it will be a while, but she will find out eventually.


	5. Chapter 5 Not a Fairytale

A/N: Thanks to Alyssa and Bailey of Project Team Beta for keeping me in line and to the folks at Twilight Enabler on LJ for adding this to their rec. list.

**Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. In other words, I do not own Twilight.**

* * *

Chapter 5: Not a Fairytale

I morphed into Swan and followed Owl out the window, into the dark forest. The temperature had started to drop, and the rain was turning into icicles hanging on the branches. Thousands of our reflections shimmered past as we glided through the trees. Well, I glided; Owl flapped.

I followed him as we flew towards the coast, and my brain was peacefully quiet. In many ways, it was easier to be in Swan's form than in Bella's. Sure, Swan was hungrier, and she felt the tug pulling her to Edward even more urgently, but everything with Swan was instinctual, basic, and not muddled with overreactions and emotions.

Owl slowed and circled until he silently perched in a tree, several yards above the ground. I flew a little farther, so I could land on the ground without disturbing his hunting. I caught several small frogs, before an unsuspecting vole crossed my path. He was swallowed with little struggle, and soon, Owl landed beside me.

Our heads turned simultaneously when we heard crashing behind us: several large animals were headed towards us. I sniffed the air, but the scent confused me; it reminded me of the wolves I had encountered in Canada, but there was an undertone that almost smelled human. We watched as the first of the beasts stepped through the trees into our small clearing.

It took up so much space that I wanted to step back, but at the same time, I didn't want to draw its attention. It was staring at Owl for the moment, I figured because he was smaller and perhaps seemed an easier catch. With my neck stretched, I was about two feet taller than Owl, but I was still at least two feet smaller than the monster behind us.

Owl shifted his body so that he was fully facing it, and he tilted his moon-shaped face until it was perpendicular to his frame; Owl was liberal with his freaky head tricks. I didn't turn; I assumed the quickest route of escape was in the opposite direction of the shaggy creature. They stared at each other, and if it weren't for their silence, I would have thought they were carrying on a conversation. Perhaps they were sizing each other up, deciding who would attack whom first.

Owl turned his head towards me and tilted his face the other direction as if asking a question. I looked at the beast, then back to Owl. If he thought I would join him in assaulting the monster, he had another think coming. That thing was not Dinner, it was Run Like Hell!

Owl shifted on his talons, and the beast made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle. My instinct for preservation kicked in, and I clumsily launched myself into the air. I didn't know what Owl was planning, but I wasn't going to stick around to watch him be eaten, and I certainly wasn't going to be next.

My heart raced as I flew above the treetops, letting my body fly where it most wanted to go. The normally constant fog was lifting, and the stars twinkled against the night sky as I soared through the air. I followed the 101 to the turn-off for the house at the edge of the forest. I circled the structure, hunting for Edward by trying to find the window closest to the source of the pulling.

As I lowered myself, I heard a piano playing a delicate and haunting tune. I listened more carefully and realized that the music was live and was coming from the same room Edward was in. I drifted to the ground and waddled to the window nearest the pull. I tried to look in, but the security lights around the house kept me from seeing inside the dark room; only Swan looked out at me, my reflected head bobbing softly to the slow rhythm of the song.

The piece was familiar, I thought perhaps by Tchaikovsky, but for some reason I kept picturing Bela Lugosi's _Dracula_ as I listened. There were many impromptu flourishes being added by the pianist, enhancing the otherwise simple song, transforming it into a complex mating call. I opened my mouth to respond, wanting to sing a lovely, harmonious accompaniment to show my appreciation.

A blaring, aggravating 'honk' shattered the beauty of the night song, and after my momentary shock, I realized it came from me. Oh beak, I think I hate you.

The music came to an abrupt halt, and I listened for sounds from inside the house but heard none. The front door unexpectedly swung open, and startled, I ran farther into the yard and built speed to be able to fly almost straight up into the sky. Once in the air, I glanced below me to watch a rust-colored head walk back into the house.

I made my way home and swooped through the kitchen window, landing on the faux-parquet floor with barely a clatter. I changed back into Bella and pulled on my clothes, wanting to kick myself for sitting outside of Edward's window like some crazed stalker swan.

Once I had pulled my blouse on (and found the two buttons I bit off earlier to get the shirt to fall from my swan body), I started to make my way upstairs. Then, I remembered: I had left Owl alone facing the monster in the woods; I had abandoned my father to be eaten by that beast!

A sob tore from my throat as I sank to the step I had stopped on, grasping the railing like a lifeline. Hot tears spilt down my cheeks as I desperately tried to imagine some way, any way that he could have made it out alive. Was there anyone I could call? What would I say? 'Hi, my dad, the town sheriff, might have been attacked by an animal a few miles out of town, and by the way, he might be an owl when you stumble across his mangled corpse.'

I was crying outright, keening wails shaking my whole body, ripping me apart.

"Bells? What on earth is wrong with you? Have you been hurt?"

The masculine voice calling to me from upstairs caused my next sob to turn into a surprised shriek. I slowly turned my head to look up and saw my dad's head sticking out from the bathroom. I'd never been so happy to see his stupid mustache in my life.

I pulled myself up and started to run up the stairs at lightning speed to hug my dad, but I stopped myself when I heard the shower. I stayed a few feet from the door as he continued to watch me with wide, worried eyes, one eyebrow raised to indicate his confusion. "What's going on?" he whispered, shaken.

I started to laugh, not caring that I must have looked hysterical. He still looked concerned, so I reigned myself in, though my shoulders still shook, and I smiled sheepishly up at him. "I'm fine, just…" I lifted my left hand to swirl it in the air by my ear, our sign language we had used for years to indicate one of Renee's crazy ideas.

He smiled back at me, but his eyes still showed his apprehension. "Do you want to talk about it after I get out of the shower?"

I wanted to talk about it; I wanted to talk about so many things, but it was all too much to discuss tonight. I was exhausted, and even if we started talking now, I knew I would fall asleep in a matter of minutes.

I shook my head, and he opened his mouth to protest, but I beat him to the punch. "We really need to talk, but can we do it tomorrow?" I pleaded.

He snapped his mouth closed and then sighed once he realized how tired I truly was. "Okay, but we will talk tomorrow, Isabella. No more skirting the issue, understand?"

"Yes, dad."

He scrutinized my face and then sighed again, giving me an eye roll. "I love you, kiddo. Go get some sleep."

I nodded and reciprocated, "Love you too."

He shut the door, and I drug myself to my bedroom. I flopped onto my bed without taking off my clothes, and as I had predicted, I was asleep within moments.

I woke in the morning when light hit my eyes; I peeled one eye open to find the culprit, only to be greeted by the sun, shining brighter than I thought possible in Forks. I made my way to the window to find snow and ice covering every surface, causing the light to reflect. Clouds quickly covered the sun again, and I bit my lip, wondering if I could possibly be trusted driving on the snow. Personally, it sounded like a recipe for disaster.

I groaned when I finally noticed the time on my alarm clock. I would have less than thirty minutes to shower, dress and get out the door, and still be able to drive slowly and carefully to school; I prayed Dad had saved me a cup of joe.

I managed to get ready in time and thanked the java gods for my father's foresight as I ran out to my truck. Luckily, new Bella was a balanced Bella, and I managed to slide to the driver's side door without cracking my coccyx. Before I could open the door, however, I noticed a shimmer on my back tire. Worried that I might have picked up a nail, I focused on the tread and saw small chains criss-crossed on the tire. I smiled, glad to have my dad taking care of me, even if he still had a lot of explaining to do.

I drove to school slowly and without incident, though I held my breath most of the way in fear. I clambered down from the cab with my backpack, and my gaze honed in on the golden eyes watching me from across the lot. I couldn't stop the shy smile that spread across my face in answer to Edward's knowing grin.

I started to walk to him, glad that my entourage had not yet caught up to me for once. I had just taken a couple of steps when the tiny terror standing next to him opened her mouth. "No!" she breathed, so softly I almost didn't hear her.

At first, I thought she was talking to me, telling me to stay away from her brother yet again; ire gurgled up like bile in the back of my throat. I glared at her, wondering if I should try to make nice with her, just ignore her, or tell her off. It was then that I grasped that she wasn't looking at me at all but was instead watching the entrance of the parking lot.

Tyler Crowley was about to turn into the lot, driving faster in his blue van than was reasonable on the ice. As he turned the corner, his brakes locked, causing him to skid. I quickly determined his trajectory and knew he would hit me in a matter of seconds. I knew I could probably run around the truck, or even jump over it for that matter, but there would be witnesses who would find my super speed suspicious to say the least. On the other hand, if I 'slipped' in surprise and wound up underneath my truck, people might be amazed but most likely would just joke about my clumsiness saving me.

I calculated the distance between the ground and the bottom of my truck, and there was plenty of room for me from what I could see. I held my breath and hoped there weren't any parts hanging lower than my running boards that I wasn't aware of, as I threw my backpack under the truck. The van was only a yard away as I bent to swing myself behind the backpack, and I hoped to make it to the other side of the truck before the van connected.

Only my head remained out of the truck's shelter, when two feet, clad in expensive leather shoes, appeared beside me. My eyes travelled up, and further up, until they reached the back of a bronze head. Without thought, my hands shot out and grabbed his legs, and thanks to the ice, he slipped and fell face forward. I winced, terrified I had damaged the most perfect face in the world with my thoughtlessness, but he had caught himself on his hands, looking like he was in the middle of a push up.

I jerked him backwards, pulling his body next to me, my hands scaling him as he slid, but they couldn't reach his head in time. He tried to turn to look behind him in confusion, just as his head reached the running board, and he hit it with a loud crack; I softly hissed when I saw that the metal was bent, worried that he might have a concussion. I moved my hand close to his head then, trying not to touch it in case I hurt him worse but trying to keep him from butting the truck again.

I pulled us both further under the truck, but we were only halfway across when the van hit. Thankfully, the truck was a solid hunk of metal and barely moved above us. I felt a scratch on my left arm where it pressed against the bottom of the truck, trying to protect Edward. I stayed still, my hands still grasping Edward's leanly muscled arms as I waited to make sure that the van and truck had both settled.

I tried to lift my head, but something held it down. There was pressure along my back, and I worried for a moment that something might have come loose from the truck and fallen on me. I didn't hurt and knew I could get out from under it, but I didn't have a clue how I would fix my truck. Whatever was on my head started to move, caressing my hair.

I shifted my head to look at Edward, but we were too close and my nose ended up by his hair. His cinnamon pastry scent was strong in the cramped space, and I fought the urges I had to bite him or roll around in his luxurious perfume. I did see that at some point, he had snaked his right arm up my back. "Bella? Are you hurt?" his voice was low with worry.

"I'm perfectly fine, but you hit your head pretty hard. We need to get out of here; do you think you can move?"

"Of course." The worry was still there but was now tinged with irritation.

We tried to scoot back out from under the truck, but we were too tangled together to move. He managed to get his arm free from me, but I was afraid to move my hand from above his head, not wanting him to do more damage to himself. He started to move and I tried to keep him covered.

"Bella, really, this will go much faster if you stop hovering," he sighed, exasperated.

"Sorry, you're right." I moved my arms, pulling into myself.

He managed to quickly wiggle out, and I followed behind. He was standing perfectly still as I brushed dirt off my pants. I snorted when I saw that the left arm of my jacket was ripped apart from my elbow down. I'd only had it a week, and it was a shame that it was ruined, even if I just wore it for show since I was hot all of the time.

I looked up at Edward, finally, looking for any signs of harm. I tried to circle him to look at the back of his head, but he turned on his heel to follow me. "Stop it! Let me look at the back of your head."

He paused, and I looked but saw nothing. Just to be sure, I leaned closer and quietly sniffed for blood. I thought I was being subtle, but apparently I wasn't quiet enough because he spun around to look at me. I stepped back, but not before he caught me.

"I don't see anything," I mumbled, and looked up at his eyes. They were dark, and I worried that he might still have a concussion even though he wasn't bleeding. "Maybe you should sit down," I suggested.

He looked at me incredulously and laughed. "You sit down!"

I didn't find anything funny about the situation, and I really became concerned. From behind me, a girl hesitantly cleared her throat.

I spun around to see Alice, her arms crossed and her head tilted in wonder. Jasper stood close behind her and seemed genuinely concerned when he asked "Bella, are you okay?"

Why was everyone asking me that lately? Oh yeah, because I probably shouldn't be. "I'm fine, but your brother hit his head hard enough to dent my truck. I told him he should sit down, but he won't listen to me."

Alice smiled in amusement, "Yeah, he's hard-headed like that."

I wanted to convince her that he was really hurt, but Jasper interrupted me, "Bella, Edward isn't hurt, stop worrying."

My concern lessened as he spoke, but for some reason it seemed unnatural. Alice grabbed my attention.

"You better get out there." She pointed behind her to the parking lot where a crowd was gathered looking at my truck and Tyler's van. I heard people yelling and girls crying.

"Oh my god, is Tyler okay?"

"Oh, he should be fine. Everyone's afraid you've been squished, though."

I moved around the couple and pushed my way through the crowd, hearing gasps as I passed. I eventually made it to the other side of the van, noticing that the two vehicles were crammed together, and people were on the ground, looking under where they connected. Coach Clapp was one of them, and he called my name from under the van before shouting "Damnit, someone get me a flashlight!"

"Coach! I'm here! I'm fine!"

Most of the crowd quieted as they turned to look at me standing amongst them. The people on the ground looked up at me and Coach Clapp started to stand. "How'd you get out of there?"

The lie fell from my lips like rotten fruit from a tree. "I slipped on the ground when I saw the van coming, so I just rolled under the truck."

He nodded, like this made all the sense in the world. "I was hoping you'd managed to get down there."

He smiled in relief. I smiled back and was going to tell him that I thought Edward was hurt, but then I saw that Edward had moved back across the lot and was standing by the Volvo again, like he had been watching from afar all along.

I narrowed my eyes at him, but he just watched me broodingly, such a change from the smile he had for me less than half an hour ago; Alice smiled cheekily, though, and gave a little wave.

I heard sirens behind me and jerked my gaze away to watch an ambulance and a police cruiser pull up. The crowd moved back a little to let the paramedics get through to Tyler, and I let myself be swept away with it. Dad got out of the cruiser, and after briefly checking on Tyler, his eyes scanned the crowd until he found me. He made his way over and put his arm around me.

"Sorry about your truck, we'll get it fixed quickly, though." His hand patted my shoulder, and he smiled at me reassuringly. I tried to smile back but couldn't keep my brows from pulling together when I looked from my poor truck to Edward, who was making his way over to us with a look of determination.

I felt jittery as he neared, too wound up from the day's events, and the crowd, and the aroma of Tyler's blood that floated through the air as he was loaded onto the stretcher. Unwittingly, my body started to strain towards Tyler as the paramedics pushed him by us.

Charlie's grasp on me tightened until it actually became painful, rooting me to the spot better than any anchor. I started to tremble, and saliva filled my mouth; if I started to drool over Tyler's bloody body, they would lock me up and throw away the key.

He lowered his head to mine so only I could hear his whisper "Keep your head down so no one sees your eyes. We're going to the cruiser."

I turned my gaze to the toes of my sneakers and he led me away. We were still several feet from the car when he stopped; expensive leather shoes that were beginning to get on my nerves were firmly planted in our way.

"Chief Swan," a honeyed and deceptively anxious voice spoke. "I think I saw Bella hit her head when she crawled out from under her truck. You might want to take her to the hospital to have her checked out."

My eyes snapped up, crackling with betrayal. I wanted to accuse him of lying, to clarify that he was the one who had hit his head, but I was shocked into silence when Dad reached out the hand that wasn't around me and grabbed Edward's hand. My father usually avoided touching people he wasn't close to, at least for as long as I could remember, and I felt certain from my only experiences around him that Edward was the same.

Edward seemed as surprised as I was as he watched the chief, unblinking. Dad's jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. I wondered if he was upset at Edward's reaction, or if something else was bothering him. He forced a smile. "Well, thanks for your concern, son. I'll make sure to keep an eye on her, and I'll bring her right in if anything seems amiss."

I breathed a sigh of relief; I knew terrible things would happen if I was forced to get in the ambulance with Tyler and his yummy blood at that moment. The only blessing in the whole situation was that Edward wasn't bleeding. He smelled too tasty as it was, and I now knew I wouldn't have been able to stop myself from jumping on him if he had been wounded. What a masochistic idiot I had been for trying to sniff for his blood earlier.

Edward removed his hand from Dad's grip, slowly nodding his head, but his brows lowered in confusion. We proceeded to move around him, and Dad opened his passenger door for me. I settled in and pulled on my seatbelt then kept my eyes on my hands, though I could feel Edward's watchful gaze through the window.

Dad got in and started the car, his moves hasty. He flipped the switch to turn the red and blues off, which was some consolation, but I still tried to sink as far down into the seat as possible, not that anyone wouldn't know it was me anyways.

We were about a block away from the school when Dad slapped both of his hands down on the steering wheel, making me jump in my seat. "What were you thinking, Isabella, getting that close to a vampire? Is this some kind of game to you?"

The world slowed around me as I turned my head to him; sure I had misheard his questions. "Whaaaahuh?" My basic motor skills seemed to have slowed, too.

He briefly turned to glare at me before looking back to the road. "Don't pretend you didn't know. That boy's head was so full of you I could barely pick up anything about his family. Not that I needed to read his thoughts to know what he was, he might as well have been shouting Strigoi Mort."

I tried to speak but had to clear my suddenly dry throat to do more than squeak. "Read his thoughts? Vampire? What are you talking about?"

He shot another brief glare at me as we pulled into our driveway, but once we were parked he turned fully towards me. Something in my dazed expression must have convinced him that I was indeed quite clueless, because his face changed from anger to pained amazement.

"Bells, how much do you remember?"

"I remember we both turned into birds last night," his countenance turned even sadder. "Right?" I questioned in panic.

He reached out and patted my shoulder, trying to calm my agitation. "That's right, Bella, we did," he tried to soothe me, but his face was still distressed which made me worry that he was just trying to appease me.

"C'mon," he said gently, "let's go in and talk."

I followed him into the house, dropping my backpack in its place by the staircase, like I had every day for the past week. So quickly, I had settled here, made it my home in a way that I never had in Phoenix; yet from my first night in Forks everything had been topsy turvy, strange, and so confusing I've often thought I was losing my mind.

Dad was sitting at the dining table in the kitchen, holding the portable phone in his hands and looking at it like he was expecting answers. I went to my seat, watching him the whole time.

"Bella, you didn't know what I was talking about when I said I could read that boy's thoughts?" he asked in a whisper, still staring at the phone in his grip.

"No, I can't say I did. Were you being metaphorical or something?"

He smiled sadly, "No, I can't say I was. The problem is why it came as news to you. I thought all this time that you were blocking me from reading your mind, but I'm beginning to wonder if you're blocking everyone, including yourself."

I sighed, frustrated and scared. "Dad, please, stop talking in riddles. Tell me what the hell is going on!"

"Language, Isabella," he said automatically, then, as if realizing the absurdity of his reprimand in the midst of our tense conversation, he laughed.

"I never thought I would have to explain all of this to you. You were supposed to be born with the knowledge, like I was, like we all were. If you can't hear my thoughts, I don't know if I can make it all clear to you, so let's start there."

He punched buttons on the phone, dialing more than eleven numbers, leading me to believe he was making an international call. Dad turned up the volume on the handset so we could both hear the rings clearly. After several moments a young man answered, his voice almost sounding British, except there was a unique lilt to his voice, as if English wasn't his native language. "Charles, is that you?"

"Yes, Thane, we're both here."

"Issy? Are you there too?"

Dad looked at me expectantly. I looked at the phone as I answered, "I'm sorry, this is Bella."

"Of course," the man answered, "Bella."

Dad spoke hesitantly, "I think you were right about her blocking me, but she seems to also be blocking her own memories. I don't even know if she can hear me."

"I hear you," I spoke up, disliking that he was discussing me with a stranger and feeling like I was broken because I couldn't read minds, of all things.

"No, Bells, I mean…" he touched his forehead with his fingertips.

"Oh, then no, I can't hear you."

The man interrupted, "I doubt she is completely blocking you, it should go against her instincts. However, she might not be aware what she is hearing. Charles, I want you to concentrate on a short phrase, and Bella, I want you to close your eyes and focus on hearing, or even feeling what your father is thinking."

I closed my eyes and tried to do as I was told, but I heard nothing and felt only frustration, which could easily be my own. I said so, but Dad looked thoughtful.

"I was frustrated too, so don't dismiss it completely. My feelings might have influenced yours, at least."

"Perhaps…" the man muttered, and then told my father to place his hand on my bare arm.

"Bella, close your eyes again, and Charles, please repeat your phrase."

I concentrated, and at first I still just felt the same frustration, but I could tell that it was definitely too strong, and somehow different, than my own. I started to feel excited and was about to share my findings when I heard it: a very quiet voice, like a whisper through a door "I love you, Bells."

My eyes flew open, and my face hurt with my grin. "I love you, too, Dad!"

He grinned back at me, but the man interrupted again. "Excellent, now, close your eyes again, and Charles, try to project a memory for Bella. I know it is harder for you, but she might be able to see it more clearly than she can hear your voice."

My eyes closed, and almost instantly an image popped in my head, but I couldn't immediately tell what it was. As I focused, colors became sharper, and lines more crisp. There was a girl, no more than seven years old. She had bouncing brown hair under a backwards Mariners cap and wide brown eyes in her heart shaped face. Her clothes were covered in mud, and she held a plastic light saber, pointing skyward as she ran towards us in the vision.

"Don't worry, Daddy!" she shrieked. "I'll thave you from the dragon!"

We chuckled, my father's masculine voice sounding lower in my mind than normal. "But I thought I was supposed to save the damsel in distress."

"What'th a damthel?" She stood in front of us, her mouth twisted in puzzlement.

We laughed again. "She's the beautiful lady that the knight saves from the dragon."

Understanding dawned on her face and she smiled a gap-toothed grin. "Then I'm no damthel, I'm a knight! You be the damthel, Daddy!"

"Of course, Baby," we responded, controlling our laughter.

She rolled her eyes, lifting the light saber with both hands. "No, Daddy, it'th Thir Bella," and she tore off across the lawn, galloping like knight and steed in one.

The vision faded as she circled the tree in the front yard, her weapon held high.

I blinked my eyes open to look at my dad, sitting across from me, worried. "Bells?"

"That's Sir Bella, Dad."

He smiled triumphantly, and I laughed. "I take that as it worked?" the man spoke from the phone.

"Yes," we both said, and laughed again.

"Alright, then, I suppose you're set. Be careful, Charles. If she is indeed blocking her memories, it's probably to protect herself. Some of our sisters have blanked out particular moments of their pasts but never their entire memories… although, those who wound up carrying more than one set of memories did have more problems when trying to separate the two."

Dad nodded at the phone as if the man could see him; I couldn't even follow the conversation.

The man went on without a verbal response, "If you need any more help or need me to fill in any gaps, please feel free to call me. That goes for you, too, Bella." His last statement was imbued with heartfelt sincerity, and I raised a brow at the phone. I looked to Dad, and his smile tightened.

"Will do, Thane, thanks."

Dad turned off the headset and laid it on the table.

"Who exactly was that guy? Customer service for malfunctioning supernatural abilities?"

He snorted, "Not quite. Thane is something of an advisor for our kind."

"Ah, our kind… which is?"

He sighed. "I guess we'll start with the beginning, but if you have any questions, be sure to ask. I've never done this before, but it's all in your mind, somewhere, so maybe you'll remember some on your own."

I took several deep breaths, excited and frightened, wondering what I was about to see. He placed his hand on my arm again. "Ready?"

I nodded, and then closed my eyes, welcoming my father's memories. My mind was dark, and I could barely hear the sound of light waves hitting a boat, the same sound I remembered from a couple of years ago when Dad wanted to go fishing while we were in California.

I heard my father speaking clearly out loud. "How much do you know about the mythologies of the ancient Greeks and Romans?"

"You mean like Zeus or Hades?"

"Yes, do you know much about them?"

"No, just the basic stuff, I guess. There were gods for pretty much everything: the sea, the sky, love."

"Yes, exactly, but what's important to remember is that they weren't just 'Gods of' something, they actually personified that thing. Aphrodite wasn't just in charge of love, she was love. Are you following?"

"I think so."

"Good. Do you remember reading or hearing about other beings that personified things, but weren't necessarily gods? Nymphs, dryads…"

"Yes, but weren't they usually the children of gods, or also considered gods themselves?"

"Yes, sometimes they were. Once, our kind was considered to be the children of Nyx, the goddess of the night. For the most part, we acted as psychopomps, leading dead souls to the underworld."

In my mind, the vision came into focus. We stood at the helm of a long boat, a pole in our hands to push us forward. We looked behind us to see that the boat was filled with floating, see-through lights: souls, my mind informed me, before the vision darkened again.

My father continued, "Sometimes our duties were literal, actually requiring us to travel to the underworld with the dead. However, some of us were primarily responsible for taking the last bit of energy from a dying person, allowing his or her soul to release from his or her body."

The image changed, and we were standing over a bed in the dark. The body in the bed wheezed painfully, and we reached out a hand, gently touching the wrinkled and clammy skin of the woman dying before us. She smiled gratefully, and we breathed, pulling her energy, her aura, away from her body, letting it fill us like the sweetest honeyed wine. She had been so weak that it was over soon, and the last of her energy left her body with a pop, like a released cork. Her eyes dimmed, and her soul floated up for our eyes only, ready to be led.

"Then there were others who were charged with causing death, wreaking vengeance and bringing people to justice."

The vision this time was brighter and clearer; if I had been asleep I would have mistakenly believed it was happening before my eyes. My body seemed more like my own, and not like a masculine form. I stood on a hilltop, watching a battle unfold before my eyes. I felt a soft hand wrap around mine, and I looked over to see the woman from my vision at the school the day before. She smiled at me, deliriously happy, and then looked back out over the massacre on the field.

"As we usually could not sustain ourselves on the energy we took from the dying, we would eat the flesh of the dead to supplement our diets." He said it so casually, so matter of fact.

I snapped my eyes open to look at him. "Please don't show me that one."

He nodded. "Usually, we tried to spare any mortals from seeing us eat flesh in our human forms, so we would transform ourselves into other creatures when we fed. The sons of Nyx usually preferred bats or owls, and were called Strix when in those forms, while the daughters preferred swans, almost exclusively."

"Preferred? You make it sound like they could have been anything, though."

"Correct, we could have been anything, or anybody, but time has limited our powers of transformation for most of us. Now close your eyes again, please."

I did so, and he continued. "Times change, and beliefs change, and most power is derived from how much faith people have in something or someone. We began to travel, finding others to believe in us. For instance, some of our sisters, the Keres, became Vila to the Slavic people, and Valkyries in the Nordic lands.

This time the vision showed us watching as a swan transformed mid-air into a lovely woman, with long, softly curling blonde hair. As she landed she was almost completely transformed, only her arms were still wings, and she was practically angelic. I was reminded of Edward's beautiful Tanya, and a sharp pang of jealousy tightened my chest.

Dad broke into my thoughts. "Roughly four thousand years ago, one of our kind bit a mortal without taking his soul. Many of us believed that it was our sister, Lyssa, who bit the man since she could spread madness to animals with a bite, but she never would say anything about it. She had the gift of prophecy, and she would often do things that didn't make sense to the rest of us, trying to influence what she had already seen."

I felt a niggling frustration at the back of my mind hearing the name, a memory that wouldn't unlock, bothering me like an itch I couldn't scratch. The memory I saw was now of the woman from my own visions, dancing in a circle around a fire at night, her arms lovingly wrapped around a slightly shorter woman with long, black hair that whipped across her face, hiding it from me as they spun. They laughed, and sparks from the flames danced on the air behind them, trying to join in their routine. Was Lyssa the woman who had appeared to me, and why would I remember her in particular?

"What happened to Lyssa?" I blurted, wondering why it mattered so much to me.

"She was lost to us," he replied sadly, before continuing. "Regardless of whose fault it was, the man became more like us than like the mortal he once was. He was stronger, his skin impenetrable, but his eyes glowed red, and his skin glowed even more than ours in the sunlight. His heart stopped beating all together, and he preferred to drink the blood of humans rather than eating flesh."

We watched from a rooftop as a tall, slender, blonde man, wearing a uniform that reminded me of a gladiator's costume, followed two drunken men down a narrow street at night, several blocks away from us. The drunken men stumbled against each other, and in a blur of speed, the man was upon them. He bent his head to one man's neck, and then the other. The men collapsed to the ground when he stepped away from them.

"He killed randomly, and mercilessly, striking when he felt hunger, not caring if it was someone's fated time to go or if they had done something to displease the gods. We decided to destroy him, before he could do any more damage. We tore him to small pieces, then set him afire, the only way we knew of to dispose of our own kind, when they were punished by being forced to be reborn. We didn't know, however, that it was already too late. Without our knowledge, and probably without even realizing it himself, he had already created more beings like him by biting other humans but not killing them."

The scene changed to day, though we still watched from a rooftop, as a woman walked out of a house, staring intently at her hands, dried blood caked on her gown. The street was busy, and most people passed without noticing her, but one woman, a slave, stopped nearby, her own hands rising to her mouth in horror. The bloodied woman stepped out from under the shade of her roof into the sunlight, and her skin threw off rainbows like she was covered with millions of crystals. The traffic in the street stopped as everyone turned to stare at her. The slave woman screamed a blood-curdling shriek of utter terror. The shining woman lifted her eyes to her, and we could see that they were a vibrant red. Without a sound, and with a flick of her hand so quick we barely saw it, she had pulled the woman to her by the throat. The woman's screams cut off in a gurgle as her life was drained away.

"The creatures would sometimes slaughter whole villages, but it seemed there was always someone they left to change into one of them. We tried to hunt them all down and discovered that their souls and flesh tasted better to us than humans', but they learned to come out only at night and hid from us in the day. Our half sisters, the Fates, were greatly angered that so many lives were being cut short before their determined time, and they blamed it all on us. They campaigned to have our duties reassigned, to make us mortal, so we hunted the creatures even more persistently.

Knowing the creatures' relation to us, the other deities began to call them Strigoi Morti, the dead Strix, after our owl form. The humans adopted this, but also began to call us the Strigoi Vii, the living Strix. Centuries passed, and we were all distressed over being relegated to the status of minor daemons. We thought we had eradicated all but a few of the Strigoi Morti, but little did we know, they had been waiting and plotting.

Three of our brothers, Aita, Mantus, and Charun, were particularly upset about our demotions and one day set out to plead our cases. They didn't return, and we all thought that they must have found some tribe to worship them. I suppose we were right, in the end, just not in the way we had imagined."

We walked through a dark tunnel and then pushed through a small door into an open area. There were many people in the room, and when we looked closely, we saw that they all had scarlet eyes. On the far side of the room, three men sat in thrones, ruling over the rest. Their eyes were red like the others, and their skin was even paler than we remembered it but now like marble instead of iridescent leather. They were our lost brothers, but somehow transformed into Strigoi Morti.

"They explained to us that they had been captured by the creatures, who had decided that if they could change some of our own kind, we might leave them alone. The change wasn't as simple for our brothers as it was for humans. When they were bit, their bodies actually became stone, and they were paralyzed. Several creatures attacked each of them at once, to incapacitate them quickly. They had to be completely drained of their blood before the Strigoi Morti's venom could completely take effect. When the arduous process was done, two of them had maintained some of their powers, and they took over the clan that had abducted them. They set themselves up as gods in the province that the clan lived in, finally regaining the worship and immortality they had so desired.

We made a deal with them, seeing that they were family, and we promised to stop hunting their kind as long as they kept their numbers in check and did their best to feed off humans who were fated to die soon, such as the infirm or warriors headed to battle. If any of their kind went astray, or caused undue notice amongst the humans, we had the right to kill that one if they didn't get to him first. The deal also benefitted us, because the other deities eventually forgave us and re-granted us our positions, since the Fates were appeased."

He interrupted his own lecture, "Are you following all of this? Have any questions?"

"I'm following. I just don't really understand how all of this really relates to us. I know I was only born seventeen years ago, are you saying we're descended from immortal beings?"

"In a way, but it's much more than that. Eventually, our powers faded again, but this time because humans stopped believing in us, turning to monotheistic religions, for the most part. We spread out, settling in different places, but our stronghold became Eastern Europe. The Strigoi Morti didn't feel as obliged to stick to their side of our bargain, since the Fates had even fewer people believing in them than we did: death has a place in every culture.

In the Slavic lands, humans began to call the Strigoi Morti "upir," a play on their word for bat, and we were quick to adopt the phrase, hoping to separate ourselves from them in people's minds. The world travelled with us and became the more common "vampire" we know today. The vampires were becoming jealous of us, though.

We had always been able to age ourselves at will, since we could change our appearance, but we had lost the ability to mate with each other when the humans' faith in us diminished and were only able to have children with humans. The offspring from these unions would have some of our powers, but could usually only change into one form, and while they could age slower than humans, they could have children of their own, and they did eventually grow old and die. We split apart; usually only two or three of us would live together amongst our mortal offspring, to keep humans from becoming suspicious."

"So the vampires were jealous that we could have children? Could they not have children?" I asked, thinking it was a petty reaction for an immortal being.

"No, they could not have children, because their bodies were frozen in death, but they didn't particularly care about actually having children, as far as I know. They were more upset that we didn't have to hide ourselves, that we could go anywhere we wanted with no one being the wiser, and we had a long-standing tradition of mating with royalty, so our children pretty much ruled the human world, even if we didn't.

We still had an uneasy truce, though, until the eighteen hundreds. Then, a sister of ours, who had been married and completely devoted to one of our brothers for thousands of years, became pregnant. The couple had never had children by humans, and word spread about their condition."

"Ewww," I interrupted, "They were brother and sister?"

"You're missing the point, Bells. The vampires heard the news too, and our former brothers decided to take action against us. We had gathered our siblings together to celebrate, never thinking any harm could befall us, and one night, the vampires attacked us."

He didn't show me a memory this time, but I remembered my vision from the previous night, the ballroom and the people fighting.

"They focused on our women, taking off with many of them, paralyzing them with their bites and tearing them into pieces. They scattered them around the world, keeping their souls attached to their bodies so they couldn't be reborn. Others they brutally maimed, ensuring they would never have children."

My disgust and horror must have shown on my face because he patted my arm where he still had held it. "Why didn't they just make them into vampires, too?" I whispered.

"Our former brothers were afraid that they might have powers stronger than their own and didn't want their control challenged. Some of the maimed sisters requested that we destroy them so that they could be reborn, even though it would be as a child of our mortal offspring. Luckily, they each maintained their memory from their previous life and also kept most of their powers, though they wouldn't gain their full powers or memories until they hit puberty. Some of our brothers decided to go the same route, wanting to grow old with the sisters they were close to. We found the pieces of many of our other sisters and allowed them to be reborn as well.

The vampires figured out what we were doing and began to kidnap the reborn children, giving them to humans for adoption and watching them from afar. We can only assume they kept the children alive to prevent them from being reborn quickly, but they discovered that the children wouldn't change if they were separated from the Strigoi, a fact we already knew from our mortal grandchildren who had moved away from us.

To keep us from eventually finding them, as soon as the children had reached adulthood, the vampires would change them, keeping their souls attached to a body that didn't have the same abilities or memories they were used to. Sometimes, the memories from those souls attach themselves to our other reborn siblings' souls."

My head was starting to hurt, and the whole thing was starting to sound complicated, as if everything could have been so much easier if it weren't for the hubris of immortal beings who should have had better things to worry about.

"Why would that have happened?" I asked, hoping the answer wouldn't confuse me even more.

"We don't really know, maybe because we all once shared our memories until our powers faded, maybe because they have important things to tell us."

I sighed. "So, which was I, one of the girls who were maimed, or one who was torn apart?"

He patted my arm again. "You were torn apart. We had found most of you by the nineteen-fifties, so I asked to be reborn then. Eighteen years ago we found the rest, I met your mother, and you were reborn."

I squeezed my hands together, anxious at thoughts of my mother. "Does Renee know? Is she like us?"

"No, she's human, but more open-minded than most. I told her about us soon after you were born; when she started noticing that you were quieter and more focused than most babies. We decided that it would be best if you went away with her, so you would have a chance to grow up without the vampires knowing where to look for you."

"Now, though, am I safe from them?"

"I hoped that since you were old enough to come into your powers now, they would leave you alone. I just can't believe that it's a coincidence that a family of vampires moved in down the street two years ago, just when you would have gained your powers if you had lived with me."

I pulled away from him, still squeezing my hands together in my lap as I looked down at them. "You said earlier that you read Edward's mind and that it was full of me. Is he here to kill me?"

"His thoughts weren't exactly about killing you, though he does think you smell appetizing. He would, though, know that I can read his thoughts, so he might have been thinking specific thoughts to throw me off."

"So it could all be innocent?" I asked with hope.

He looked at me with frustration. "Haven't you been listening? It doesn't matter, Bells. Even if he's just a confused vampire in lust, you must stay away from the Cullens. It wouldn't be long before one of them, or their friends, decides to rat you out."

I put my head in my hands, exhausted. "So, what am I supposed to do? I go to school with them, you know?"

"I know," he responded quietly. "I doubt they'll do anything in front of humans, just try not to be alone with them. I'll keep an eye open, but if you see or sense anything suspicious, let me know, and we'll leave, go to others of our kind where we'll be safer. In the meantime, we can try to figure out why and how they are openly interacting with humans."

I didn't want to spy on Edward and his family, not even for my own father. I still couldn't believe he was a monster like the ones who had destroyed my family; he didn't even have red eyes like the vampires Dad had shown me. I did have to admit, though, that I had probably always known that Edward wasn't quite human; he was too perfect, too astute, and too ingrained in my dreams.

Charlie and I hunted together that night, because he didn't want me going out on my own. He told me he would take me to the police station the next day and teach me to feed off of humans' energy without harming them so I could feed at school and not need to go out to hunt.

When we got home I quietly went to my room and tried to go to sleep, but my thoughts were filled with Edward, and the tugging on my chest was a constant ache. I felt like a sentimental fool, knowing he was most likely planning my demise but wanting nothing more than to be near him.

It was past midnight when my bedroom door flew open and my father rushed to my window, yanking it open and leaning out, peering into the darkness outside. He stared for several minutes before he spoke. "He's out there. He was thinking about climbing through your window, was weighing the pros and cons, and even though I'm standing right here looking at him, he's still out there."

I stretched my neck, trying to look out the window around Dad's back, longing for just a glimpse of Edward in the night. Dad must have heard me because he turned to me, and seeing the desperation on my face, he shut and locked the window with a sigh before walking to me. He put a hand on my cheek as he told me with pity, "I know you're a romantic, baby, but this isn't a fairytale. That boy's role in your life isn't to be your knight in shining armor."

I smiled to keep myself from crying. "I know, Daddy, I'm no damsel."

He smiled back sadly and nodded. He went to his room but came back a moment later with his pillow and blanket, and he fell asleep in front of my window.

* * *

E/N: If you made it this far, then bless you. ;-) Please review!


	6. Chapter 6 We Can't Be Friends

A/N: Just a couple of things before we get the party started.

Do you like Jasper and Alice? Do you like smut? If so, check out the "Peenaters Alice+Jasper Smut Contest" entries, including one by yours truly.

http(colon)(slash)(slash)www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net(slash)~thepeenaters#

Click on Vote Now at the top to view entries and vote for your top five faves. Voting ends tomorrow, Monday June 15, so get on over there, (but, you know, after reading and reviewing Ch. 6  ).

Also, you can begin nominating stories for The Indie Twific Awards beginning Tuesday, June 16 and ending June 23. Only stories with an average of 30 or less reviews per chapter (or 1000 reviews all together if the story is complete) can be nominated, so these awards are really, truly for the stories that do not have a lot of readership. This means it is really up to you to nominate a story if you like it, you can't just trust that enough other people will nominate so you don't have to. So, get on over there next week and nominate your favorite little stories that could. (BTW, C+S does qualify, hint, hint).

http(colon)(slash)(slash)theindietwificawards(dot)com

Thanks to Alyssa and jfairman of Project Team Beta for finding my goofs.

**Disclaimer:** **All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. In other words, I do not own Twilight.**

* * *

**Chapter 6: We Can't Be Friends**

"Billy's boy, Jake, checked out your truck last night. Says it's running as good as normal and is perfectly safe for you to drive, so you can take it to the station after school. Guess you wouldn't want me to pick you up in the cruiser again anyways, huh?"

Dad's voice in the otherwise quiet of the car broke me out of my stupor. My mind had been chasing itself all night, reviewing every moment I had seen Edward, every word spoken between us, castigating myself for not realizing that Edward was "other," too. Now, I was just left to mourn for what we could never have, even though he probably never even wanted it. I felt like a pathetic, boy-crazy fool, and I had no idea how I would gather the nerve to face him in class.

Dad pulled up next to my truck, carefully steering away from the remnants of glass left when Tyler's van was towed away. I stepped out of the car, waving with a promise to go straight to the station after my last class. I watched as he pulled out of the lot, driving down the highway, then turned back to my poor, damaged truck.

The side was dented in, but luckily the glass in the window wasn't even cracked. The door opened easily, well, as easily as it ever did, and actually closed more easily. I looked at the hinges and thought that Billy's son must have sprayed WD-40 on it while he was testing it out. I would have to thank him. I bent down to check out the dent in the running board where Edward's head had hit and noted with suspicion that it was straightened out.

I heard a wolf-whistle and snapped up. I looked across the lot to the silver Volvo, and it's tall, handsome owner standing next to it, paused in mid-stride. I should have known it wasn't him, he wasn't even looking at me. Instead he was glaring at something or someone several yards to my left. I stepped around the bed of the truck to see what had earned his wrath, but only saw my entourage walking my way.

My usual lunch buddies were joined by Tyler, his face covered in tiny bandages, and I felt bad, thinking maybe there was something I could have done to stop the van from hitting my truck altogether. "Hey, Bella!" he shouted, "Man, I'm glad I didn't flatten that ass!"

My mouth dropped open, and suddenly, I didn't feel so bad about not stopping the van.

Mike turned to Tyler, lightly punching his arm. "Crowley! Too soon, dude, too soon."

Tyler shrugged, smiling unapologetically. "Sorry," he murmured.

They had almost reached me and I stole one last glance in the direction of the Volvo, but Edward had already gone to class.

Mike walked me to English, but didn't walk me to Government like he usually did, because Tyler was waiting for us after class. He informed Mike that we had class together, and I rolled my eyes that either of them even imagined I needed an escort. Tyler sat next to me in class for the first time ever and cracked jokes through the entire class. I did my best to ignore him, but I accidentally let a growl slip out when he proclaimed, "I'll Sandra Day _her_ O'Connor!"

He was quiet for the rest of the class and walked away without a word when Jessica met me to walk to Trig. When Mike met us after Spanish, I actually considered trying to convince him and Jessica to skip the rest of school with me, so I could avoid being in the same room with Edward, but I knew I couldn't skip half of school every day for the rest of the semester, so I kept my mouth shut.

We walked through the cafeteria doors and got in line, and I sharply exhaled when I saw that Edward wasn't at his family's table, though I could tell by the pull in my chest that he was near. My sigh turned to a groan, though, when I looked at my own table and found Tyler already sitting there.

I heard a chuckle behind me just before a smooth voice whispered in my ear, "If you object so much to your lunch companions, you're more than welcome to sit with me and my family."

I closed my eyes, relishing the timbre of his tones, and knowing that if I looked at him so close to me I would probably melt into a puddle at his feet. "You're family hates me," I whispered.

He started to protest, "No-"

I cut him off, "You're sister told me to stay away from you, and I do believe she would have threatened bodily harm if we weren't in a public place."

He sighed. "She just didn't understand then, but now…"

"What, now she does?" I looked over to the Cullens to find Alice watching us carefully with inquisitive, narrowed eyes and her lips pursed like she was plotting some grand scheme. "I don't even understand, Edward, so I certainly don't expect Alice to."

He touched a hand to my shoulder, and I was surprised to feel a mixture of frustration, curiosity, and desire radiating from him. I stepped forward swiftly, breaking our contact, but trying to look like I was just moving forward through the lunch line.

"Bella, please…"

"I'm going to sit with my friends. They were concerned about me yesterday, and I'm not going to turn away from them to hang around people who can barely be civil towards me."

He started to argue again, but I finally looked up into his topaz eyes and continued.

"They're good people, and I want to sit with them."

We watched each other, unblinking, until an obnoxious voice spoke from behind him, "God, Bella, what's your damage? Dropped on the head much? Stop holding up the line!"

Our connection broke as we both turned to the source of the voice, and we glowered at Lauren as she pushed her way past us to cut in front of me. He looked back at me with a raised eyebrow as if she'd proven his point for him.

I shrugged. "Well, they're mostly good people."

I grabbed my usual soda and went to the cashier. He leaned down again to whisper to me, "You really should get more food, even if you're not going to eat it."

I looked down at his tray, full of food I was certain he wouldn't eat. "You so don't get to lecture me about my diet."

His lips twitched as he tried to hide a smile, and I pursed my lips as I grabbed a stick of beef jerky and paid for it too. "Happy now?" I asked.

"I'll be happy when you have lunch with me."

My traitorous heart fluttered, and I shook my head slightly. "Not today, Edward. I'll see you in class."

I went to my table, feeling emboldened, thinking that if I could maintain a safe yet polite distance from Edward, everything would work out. After all, it's not like he could force me to spend time with him. At least, I didn't think he could.

Lauren managed to distract Tyler throughout lunch, so I gave all of my attention to Jessica, who preened with happiness. She and Mike were discussing a beach trip they had been planning for when the weather warmed up, and somewhere between my random "uh-huh"s and "oh really"s, I agreed to go along. I wasn't too worried, though, because I figured that by the time the temperature was right, I could find an excuse to back out of it.

On the way to Biology, Angela talked about the beach trip too, but she was not thrilled about going along. She always felt like she had to be the responsible one in the group and keep everyone else from doing stupid things, like stepping on sea glass, or drowning. She told me that she spent enough time babysitting and didn't feel like doing it when she was supposed to be having fun.

I saw that Edward was already seated at our table and I slid into my seat. He was looking at me, but I kept my face turned toward the table top. I heard a projectile coming my way and looked up just in time for a balled up piece of paper to hit me on my forehead and land in front of me. Laughter was stifled from a few chairs in front of me. I unwadded the paper to read a messy scrawl: _Smile Bella!_

I looked up and Mike was turned to face me, his eyes crossed and his tongue out. I realized I was frowning, and had been ever since I saw Edward already in his seat. I smiled tightly and quickly stuck my tongue out in return, willing to act juvenile to keep Mike from worrying. From the corner of my eye, I saw Edward's hands tighten on his workbook.

Against my will, I turned to look at him, wondering what had upset him. His face was still and his voice controlled when he softly spoke, "Bella, do you have a romantic interest in Mike Newton?"

I couldn't decide whether to laugh or scream, so I did neither and replied calmly, "What makes you think you have the right to ask me that?"

"Are friends not allowed to inquire about each other's amorous pursuits?"

Any other time I would have giggled at his old-fashioned wording, but knowing that he was quite possibly several hundred years old brought reality crashing down on me. "We're not friends, Edward. We can't _be_ friends."

I hadn't intended to sound sad and desperate, but I knew that's how it came out. I could tell he was struggling to maintain his calm façade, but his brows lowered and his lips tightened.

"Why, because my family and I aren't _good people_?" he asked bitterly.

I knew we were treading on dangerous ground. He probably already suspected that I knew what he was, but I tried to do damage control nonetheless. "I don't know you, Edward. You might be a wonderful person, or you might be awful. It doesn't change the fact that you would be better off not being my friend."

He smirked darkly, before turning his golden stare to me. My breath left me as he seemed to look straight into my thoughts. "Why do I get the feeling you just stole my line?"

"Please, Edward, don't make this hard on me," I begged, though I really wanted to plead with him to ignore my words, to sweep me off of my feet, to take me away someplace where we could be together.

He watched me, still trying to interpret my soul, then nodded briefly once and turned away.

I managed to make it through Biology without crying, so in P.E. I punished my opponents on the basketball court. Mike always insisted on being on my team, though whether because of my newfound sports skills or because of my teeny tiny gym shorts, (Really? What kind of perverts made up this uniform?) I honestly didn't know. At one point, I had riled myself up so much that when I passed the ball to Mike, the force of my throw knocked him on his rear.

"Whoa, easy there, tiger. Save it for the other team." He rubbed his tush as he stood.

"Sorry, Mike." I smiled apologetically.

After class I changed clothes quickly and pushed through the door to leave the locker room before the other girls. I was halted in the hallway by a small, cold hand wrapped around my arm. I concentrated and felt the girl's frustration, curiosity, and a hint of fear. I turned to her, not surprised to see Alice watching me in puzzlement.

I extricated my arm and raised an eyebrow in question. "May I help you?"

"I don't understand you, Bella Swan."

"That makes two of us, Alice Cullen."

A couple of girls came through the door and rushed past us, and we silently waited for them to exit the hall.

"What I mean is, what are you trying to do to my brother?"

I couldn't believe she had the gall to ask me that after she practically railroaded me the previous week. "I'm doing what you wanted, staying away."

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Don't pretend you care a lark for my desires. I do feel that everything would be so much easier if you had never come to Forks, but you did, and I doubt you plan on leaving anytime soon. So, why don't you just play nice with Edward so the rest of us can get on with our lives."

She really knew how to woo a girl. "Look, I don't really know what your brother expects from me, nor do I care."

_Liar, _my brain responded. _Shut up, brain. No one asked you._

I continued, "It would really be best if Edward chooses to ignore me, just like you all ignore every one else. The status quo would be upheld, peace would rain down from the heavens, all that jazz, okay? Feel free to tell him that for me."

I walked around her and left the building, walking straight to my truck without even a glance at the Volvo, and I ignored the incessant pull coming from the other side of the lot. I reached the police station in just a few minutes, and Dad was already waiting for me outside. I got out of the truck and he put an arm around my shoulders as we walked into the station. _Were you able to avoid them today?_ His voice softly whispered in my head.

_For the most part,_ I concentrated on projecting to him.

He slowed and looked at me questioningly. "Did you get that?"

"Yeah," I responded, "I heard you, but I guess you didn't hear my answer. It was alright. Maybe we can change my middle name from Marie to Avoidance."

He nodded, and then changed the subject. "We'll keep working on it. I think you'll get stronger with practice, both with hearing and projecting."

We went to his cramped office, and I limberly stepped over several piles of paper to reach a folding chair that was leaning against the wall. I moved it in front of his desk, being careful not to set it on anything important. Obviously, he hadn't had any visitors in a while. He shut the door behind us and walked behind his desk, taking a seat in an office chair that had seen better days.

"Okay, Bells, I thought we'd start in here for now, since it can be a little awkward until you get used to it. First, I want you to close your eyes and concentrate on feeling the energies of everyone in the building. Start with me."

With my eyes closed and focusing I could sense Dad's energy, or aura as Renee would call it. It was off-putting, like a bolt of lightning hanging out in the room with me, just waiting to strike. "I sense your energy. It's too hot and… I don't know, sharp?"

"Good, Bells, you've probably been distinguishing energies for a while, without realizing it."

"Renee made me take a class with her on seeing people's auras. I never saw anything, but I did realize I could kind of feel the difference when someone was healthy or sick or excited, you know?"

"Your mom was just trying to help, in her own way."

I opened my eyes to see him frowning sadly. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense now."

He nodded and spoke again, "Go ahead and close your eyes. I want you to think about the energies in the processing room."

I focused and gave him my results. "Five energies, four are very warm, like heated blankets, the other is a little dimmer? Like a regular old quilt?"

He chuckled. "That's Annie, she's a little under the weather. Okay, now go to the holding area. Can you distinguish between the officers and the prisoners?"

"There are three officers outside of the cells, and they all have the same kind of comforting warmth as the ladies out front. Three prisoners are sitting inside, and they're all agitated. Two are just slightly fired up, like hot griddles, but the other, the one that's alone… he's about to boil over."

"Very good, kid. Now, try to pull that energy into you. Try to bring their levels down to those of the officers, but try to stop before they get sick like Annie."

I opened my eyes, quirking an eyebrow. "Ummm, Obi Wan, just pull that energy into me? You can't give me any more instruction than that?"

He smiled at me. "This should be as natural as drinking water, Bells. Heck, for you, it should be even easier. Now, close your eyes and do it."

I focused, and as I watched in my mind, their energies broke apart, like dandelion fluff blowing on the wind. Little particles floated to me, and I inhaled. They each had their own distinct taste, one greasy, like fried chicken, one hearty, like beef stew, but the other burned, like alcohol going down my throat.

I finally knew what had happened with Tanya in that snowy field in Alaska; she had forced her energy on me. I became distracted, wondering how she knew how to do it, and it took me a moment to realize that the man whose energy was once boiling was now quickly fading, his energy far dimmer than Annie's, about to blink out.

"Shit!" Two voices hissed as Dad slapped a hand on my arm to break my concentration. We both hopped out of our chairs and sprinted out the door and down the hall to the holding cells. We slowed to a human dash when we saw the officers, and Dad continued past the drunk tank to the solitary cell, where the man inside was twitching on the floor, his mouth foaming.

"Call an ambulance!" Dad shouted, before turning to me. "Go on home, kid. I'll have to stay here tonight while a couple of guys accompany him to the hospital. Will you be okay alone?"

I breathed in, shaken, but trying to play it cool in front of my dad's co-workers. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

He breathed deeply, too, darting a glance around the suddenly crowded room before giving me a look filled with parental concern. "Call me if you need anything, or if you just want to talk."

I nodded, knowing he would want to discuss my near manslaughter in private. "Sure, will do."

I drove home, my hunger completely banked, and my stomach uncomfortably full. Once there, I quickly finished my homework then watched some television, but nothing remotely interesting was on. I wanted to leave the house, to go listen to Edward play the piano, or watch him reading the newspaper, anything really, as long as I was near him. I stayed home, though, knowing my dad's request that I stay away from the Cullens was for my own safety.

I went upstairs, intent on going to bed early, but I paused in front of my window, looking across the street, where Dad saw Edward waiting the night before. I knew he wasn't there now; the pull was telling me he was somewhere near his own house, but I couldn't help wishing he was looking back at me.

I started to turn away from the window, when I noticed that there was something different about it. I ran my hand along the frame, and touched the locks that hadn't been on the window in the morning. I slowly walked downstairs to get the portable phone, and then I took it back upstairs with me. I dialed my father's direct line, looking at the window again, realizing that more than just the locks were new.

He answered on the third ring. "Bells? Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, I suppose so, it's just… Did you have a new window installed in my room?"

He was quiet for a second. "Yes, I took a couple of hours off this morning and had a guy come over to install locking windows upstairs."

I messed with the window while he spoke, opening and closing the lock, pushing the window open for a little while. "Don't you think you're going a little overboard? I doubt his curiosity is going to inspire him to climb through a second story window," I said more bitterly than I intended.

"Whose curiosity, Bells?" _Like he didn't know_.

I was quiet as I shut and locked the window again, so he continued, sincerely. "You really have to get better at reading minds, and soon."

After hanging up, I showered and went to bed, quickly falling asleep like I'd eaten a complete Thanksgiving dinner.

The following weeks passed slowly in a dismal fog of longing. At lunch and in Biology I did my best to keep from looking directly at Edward, not wanting him to see me staring at him like a love-starved puppy, but I couldn't help the occasional glance. Out of the corner of my eye I would catch him pinching the bridge of his nose, like he was in pain, and I watched the dark circles under his eyes become more sunken, and the gold of his eyes turned to black as the weeks dragged by.

I put all of my effort into learning to read minds and projecting, but by the beginning of March I had only managed to progress to reading emotions a little more clearly, and only while touching someone, and I could still only hear my dad's specific words or see images if he was concentrating on sending them to me and we were touching. He could still only feel my emotions, no matter how hard I concentrated on projecting my thoughts to him.

I had mastered siphoning energy from people without harming anyone again, so everything wasn't a total loss. We even had a class assembly on Valentine's Day, and since everyone was hyped up on candy and V-day induced lust, I was able to have a veritable feast while the school counselors and nurse discussed abstinence and teen pregnancy. By the end of the hour, I wasn't the only one about to fall asleep in my chair.

My e-mails to Renee had become even shorter and more clipped than before, which I felt bad about in a way. Dad kept reminding me to be nice to her, that she had sacrificed half of her life for me, but I just didn't have much to tell her. I didn't think she wanted to hear about my lessons in the supernatural, and I didn't want to mope to her about my unrequited crush on someone of a different species, so my e-mails became very basic: I'm fine, I ate chicken last night (I failed to mention that it was still alive at the time, figuring she didn't need the details), I bought a new blue shirt at the consignment shop down the street.

She was convinced I was angry at her, and started calling several times a week, almost always as we were heading out to catch food. The first Tuesday in March, just as I heard Dad's wings flap as he left out of his window, the phone rang. I had the handset upstairs with me, assuming Renee would call, so I answered before the second ring.

"Renee! We're just on our way out, can I e-mail you later, please?"

"Bella?" a girl's voice questioned on the other end.

"Oh, guess you're not my mom. Hello?"

"It's Jess, I didn't mean to interrupt anything. You can call me back later if you want."

I kept in a sigh, hoping she would be quick. "No, it's okay if it won't be too long."

"Well, as you know, the Turnabout Dance is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I was thinking, if it's alright with you, that I might ask Mike to go with me." She sounded nervous, like she actually expected me to care and was genuinely begging my permission.

"Yeah, you should ask him! But, why wouldn't it be alright with me?" I had noticed in the past that Jess tended to defer to me when it came to my opinion on matters, but I didn't have a clue why she would ask me anything when it came to her own personal social affairs.

"I just wanted to make sure you didn't plan on asking him yourself."

"Jess, I have no interest in asking Mike, or anyone for that matter, to the dance. Even if I did, it would be my own fault if I didn't ask him before you did." She was making sputtering noises, so I decided to appease her. "But it was sweet of you to ask me, I guess."

"Bella! You have to go to the dance!" It was the first time I had ever heard her sound forceful with me.

"Noooo, no, no, no. I am a hazard on the dance floor, my friend." or at least I used to be when I tripped over flat surfaces.

"But it's just not going to be the same without you," she whined.

"Sorry, Jess, not this time. I've really got to go, now, but I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"K, bye," she said despondently before she hung up.

I expected her to be happier in the morning, at least her usual chipper self, maybe even bouncing off the walls if she had already asked Mike to the dance. Instead, she hung back from the crowd before school, and barely spoke during Trig or Spanish. Lunch was awkward as she and Mike sat at opposite corners of the table, as far from each other as possible, their bodies turned slightly away from the center of the group. I started to worry that Mike might have turned her down, but I didn't understand why until he and I were walking to Biology.

A large puddle on the sidewalk blocked the entrance to the science building and as I leaped over it, Mike put his hand on my elbow. Determination, excitement, and fear of rejection entered my mind from Mike's, and I winced.

"Oh, sorry, did I grab your arm too tight?" he wondered.

I shook my head, trying to decide what I could tell him to convince him to go to the dance with Jess without hurting his feelings.

"So, Bella, have you asked anyone to the dance yet?" he asked as we walked into the classroom.

_Crap, too late._ I sat in my seat next to Edward, whose head had tilted towards us at the word 'dance.'

"No, I'm not going," At the spur of the moment I came up with an excuse that seemed suitable at the time. "I'm going to Seattle that day with my dad. I need to shop for some things I couldn't bring with me from Phoenix."

I wanted to pat myself on the back, but Mike's face fell. "Oh."

"You're going with Jess, right?"

He shifted uncomfortably.

"Mike, you better not have said "no" to that girl."

He looked up at me sheepishly, "Well, I had kind of thought-"

I cut him off. "Look, Mike, tell anyone I said this and I'll make sure you never have any little Newtons. Jessica is crazy about you, and everyone but you seems to know it. No other girl is going to ask you to go unless she wants to hurt Jess. Got it?"

He nodded, but looked like he wanted to say more. "You're really not going to ask anyone?"

I shook my head.

"Well, we'll miss you then."

I smiled, and he walked back to his seat. I sensed that Edward was still watching me, though he was disturbingly still. I glanced at him, and he blatantly stared back with a look of curiosity. He turned his gaze to Mike, then back to me, all the while looking like he was working a complex puzzle. I looked to my desk in avoidance, letting my hair fall like a curtain between us, a habit I had made use of in the past few weeks almost every day.

After gym, Eric was standing next to my truck with a determined look on his face. I groaned when I saw him across the lot, but charged forward, prepared for what was coming. He opened his mouth to speak, but I interrupted. "I'm so glad you're going with Ang to the dance! You'll be really cute together, I'm sure. Too bad I won't get to see it."

His mouth had dropped open with my first words, and he struggled to respond now. "Why not?"

"My dad and I are going to Seattle that day. Still have some things to get to settle in, you know."

I made a mental note to myself to ask Dad to take me to Seattle, since everyone in town was going to think we were there at the rate I was spreading the rumor. I supposed I also needed to talk Angela into asking Eric to the dance, and I felt a twinge of guilt. Hopefully she wouldn't mind.

I was climbing in the truck when he said, "Oh, okay, have fun then."

Once I had my seatbelt on, I backed out of my spot to get in line to exit, but Edward's Volvo was blocking my way, the passenger doors opened as his siblings casually strolled across the lot to the car. I wondered what he was up to, and desperately wished I could read his mind at the moment. I concentrated so hard that I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a sharp rap on my window.

I rolled down my window, seeing Tyler standing by it with a determined look I was becoming all too familiar with.

"You and Lauren going to the dance, huh?" I started before he could even breathe, "I haven't seen her this excited all semester." Lie accomplished, and I didn't even feel guilty for throwing Lauren under the bus.

Unfortunately, Tyler wasn't as quick on the uptake as Eric. "I'm not going with Lauren, I want to go with you."

I tried to calm down, telling myself that he probably hadn't heard my Seattle story, "Sorry, but I'm going to Seattle with my dad that day."

"I was hoping you just told Mike that get out of going with him." _I could drain him in just a few seconds, with just a thought. Must not use powers for evil, Bella, must not use powers for evil._

"Nope," I bit out, "I'm really going to be gone."

"That's too bad," he responded as he started to walk away. "Guess we still have prom," he shouted over his shoulder as he got in his car.

Foul words filled my head as I turned to face forward again, hoping the Cullens had left. Rosalie was the last to climb in the car, and I saw that Edward was laughing so hard his shoulders shook. I couldn't help feeling that he was laughing at me, so I slammed both hands down on my obnoxious old horn scaring a group of girls as they walked past, and they turned to glare at me. Edward took off as soon as Rosalie's door closed, and I would have peeled out behind him, except my truck couldn't accelerate faster than a turtle.

Jessica called me that evening to tell me that Mike had called her to say he'd like to go to the dance with her. She was finally as chipper as I expected her to be. I told her that I had heard that Eric wanted to go with Angela, and Tyler hoped Lauren would ask him, and she promised to spread the word. She started begging me to change my mind and go with them, telling me that the guys would still dance with me if I wanted to. I didn't tell her that was what I was worried about but told her about the Seattle trip instead, which is when my dad walked through the door, looking at me with a smile and a raised eyebrow. I curled my lip, rolling my eyes and got Jess to hang up.

"Seattle?" he asked curiously.

"Yeah, I might have kind of told several people that's why I couldn't go to the dance the Saturday after next."

"Why don't you go to the dance? It would be a good opportunity to feed, all those hormones floating around."

I grimaced. "Eh, I don't have a date, and I don't want to be a fifth wheel or anything."

"Honey, I'm sure any boy would be happy to go with you, just ask someone."

The real problem, that I had of course not told anybody, was that there was only one boy I wanted to dance with, and I knew my dad would change his tune if I asked Edward to go, whether he said yes or not. So, I pulled out the big guns. "Dad, the Cullens will probably be there."

I knew they probably wouldn't, they weren't big on school functions if the rumor mill was true, and I couldn't blame them. After all, it must be hard to not eat a classmate or two when they're all crowded in a tiny room in low cut dresses, gyrating all over the place.

His lips tightened. "Okay, Seattle it is. I'll have to make sure there are enough guys at the station that day so I won't get called in."

That night, after hunting, I went to sleep and dreamed, though I wouldn't remember much of it in the morning.

I was dancing a cotillion, lined up with several couples, facing a young, black-haired man with twinkling blue eyes, whom I felt great affection for. He wore knee high boots that showed off his trim calves, tight breeches that showed off his other assets, a military coat with tails, a bright blue sash across his chest, and a large metal star proudly displayed over his heart. I laughed when he swayed close enough for me to see that the star was decorated with tiny cherubim, their fat baby faces framed by wings.

"Is that your idea of a joke, my Lord?" I questioned, still laughing.

"No." He smiled, his deep voice rumbling from his wide chest. "It's my king's idea of an honor."

The King of Sweden was thrilled with him. First he had handpicked a successor for the monarch, a French soldier who was well liked by all. He had followed up his diplomatic quest by announcing his engagement to a French woman. Of course, only our family knew that I wasn't any more French than he was, and we had been married for all intents and purposes for many millennia.

Also, only our family knew that no amount of political games would really stop Napoleon's desire to own all of Europe, at least, not until we decided to make it stop. Our blood-thirsty sisters in France would continue to goad him on, just as they had goaded the puppets of the revolution not too long ago. Their greed was a bit distasteful even to me during that time. Surely they could have stopped after the first ten thousand deaths or so. On our side of the fracas, my Lord and I, and the family members who had travelled with us, would continue to rile up the enemies of the Empereur Petit. We would feed their vengeance, and feed off of their emotions and their dead in return.

We continued to dance, our gloved hands barely touching at rare moments, my empire-waist dress swirling around me as I spun towards him. A new dance, the waltz, was sweeping the continent, but was still considered impolite in public. I wanted to be in my Lord's arms as we danced, but alas, we must subscribe to propriety for the time being.

"Issy, you seem to have acquired yet another admirer," he said with a charming smile. The knave couldn't even be bothered to pretend to be jealous.

"Finally, maybe someone will rescue me from your evil clutches." I tapped his arm lightly with my closed fan and he lightly chuckled.

The song ended and he stepped close to me, whispering above me, "It's the British Commodore. Work your magic, my darling, convince him to continue to fight on our country's side." he pressed a kiss to my forehead and then walked away.

I turned, expecting a paunchy, middle-aged peacock of a military man, and instead found a tall, handsome, bronze-haired rogue, striding toward me with confidence. The glistening epaulets on his shoulders emphasized their breadth and his tight, white breeches hugged his muscular thighs. I felt even warmer than normal as my gaze travelled up to his emerald eyes.

I had seen this man before, many times, in fact, in many different incarnations, but before, he was always dead or dying when I found him, and he was always young, a mere boy forced to die in wars he had no way of understanding, to feed the insatiable hunger of me and my family. Now, he was a full grown man, in his late twenties by the look of him, practically a miracle in this time of war. He had always been fated to die a child, before, and I pondered why my sisters would let him live so long this lifetime.

"Mademoiselle Cygne, I presume?" I had never heard him speak before, but his voice was smooth and rich, pulling at me in strange ways.

I almost looked behind me to see whom he was speaking to before I remembered my new alias, Cygne, French for swan. My Love's sense of humor strikes again. "Oui, Commodore…?"

"Masen, though you may call me Tony."

He lifted my gloved hand to his lips, his eyes lowering, and even though no skin touched skin, a frisson of electricity went through me, causing me to gasp. His eyes flew open, and I felt trapped in their verdigris depths.

He stood straight, stepping closer to me than was proper, still holding my small hand in his much larger one, but for once, I did not care what others thought. The intoxicating man before me swept away all sense of propriety. He leaned near me, so only I would hear. "Shall we step out on the balcony?" he breathed, his voice a sensual rumble.

I nodded once, subtly. He turned us and moved his hand up my arm, to my shoulder, then back down to the small of my back. I almost stumbled in surprise, but he caught me, leading me forward and out the doors into the night. As soon as we were out the doors and out of sight of the crowd, he wrapped his arms around me and maneuvered me so that my back was pressed against the stone wall. One of his hands moved to my hip to hold me in place and the other tipped my chin up so he could see my expression, though if I really wanted loose, I could break both of his hands before he could blink.

"How dare…" I began, momentarily forgetting my faux-French accent.

"Who are you?" He gritted out, his lips mere inches from mine, his breath hot against my cheek.

"I am Isabel Cygne, affianced to Baron…"

"Do not lie to me," he interrupted. "I am no foppish courtier to be so easily tricked, and you are no newly betrothed, simpering maiden, fresh from a nursemaid's teat. I dare say you are not innocent at all, so who are you?"

I gasped, pretending to be enraged, though really I was quite intrigued. He was right, I was by no means innocent, but I looked like a seventeen year old human girl, so how he knew the difference was beyond me. His grasp tightened on my chin, and I could read in his thoughts the desire to kiss me, so I let my eyes flutter closed.

Before his lips could touch mine, however, I heard a throat clear, and a familiar, and at this moment terribly annoying, voice called "Issy?"

Without opening my eyes I called back, "Yes, Charles."

"I need your assistance."

I let my eyes open, and though the memory of his touch still lingered on my skin, the Commodore was now several feet away. I looked to the door where my brother, Charles, stood, lightly scratching the patch of hair below his lip that he was not yet used to. He called it a _royale_, in the French style, though I reminded him we were not actually French.

I pushed away from the wall to walk to Charles, raising a brow in question. "I believe Lyssa is about to cause a disturbance," he muttered cryptically.

I watched him, discerning that he meant more than just the usual disturbance. Lyssa had taken on her role as a French expatriate whole heartedly, behaving like a hoyden and blaming it on her supposed Gallic ancestry. The look on Charles' face, though, led me to believe she was up to more than tying ribbons into phallic shapes or singing bawdy songs at the dinner table.

I turned to the Commodore, standing silently in the corner, and I sincerely hoped we would run into each other again soon before he left. "Commodore," I dipped my head and dropped into a slight curtsy.

He bowed in response and I turned to leave, following my brother. "What is it this time, Charles?" I asked, irritably.

"She's found her pet again," he mumbled.

I stifled a groan, quickly calculating the years since he had last appeared. It had been twenty-five years since we had last disposed of him, and he had turned up again, like a bad coin. I saw them across the room, my Lyssa teaching her pet to waltz. The fashions of this time suited her, the thin material of her French empire-waist dress floating around her, her black hair cut short with little curls framing her delicate features, making her grey eyes look impossibly wide. She always looked tiny, being several inches shorter than most women, but next to the tall man she danced with, she truly was a sprite.

He was blonde, and lean, like he always was, and he wore the uniform of a Lojtnant of the Swedish army, which also came as no surprise as he was always a military man. I walked up to the couple, firmly grasping Lyssa's arm from behind, noticing she wasn't wearing her gloves, probably so she could more easily read minds. "Lyssa, my sweet, would you come with me for a moment?"

She looked up at me, tears swimming in her eyes. "No, Issy, please, not this time, let me have him, just this once, I will even leave him human," she pleaded desperately as I steered her away.

I looked behind us and saw that Charles and my Lord were already leading the man away. I hoped they could convince him to leave, to go fight the war he was meant to die in, but I knew from experience that once he met Lyssa, it was almost impossible for him to tear himself away from her. They might have to kill him, again, like they had done so many times before, and neither wanted to kill a healthy soldier before his fated time.

I stopped us when we entered the empty powder room. "You know he is fated to die in the next year or two. If we let you have him now, would you honestly be able to let him go then?" I asked, reminding her of her responsibilities.

She buried her face in her small hands, trying to hide her grief from me. I tried to pull her to me, but she jerked out of my arms. She lifted her tear streaked face and glared at me, her hands fisted now at her sides.

"You know, I cursed you once," she whispered, deadly serious.

I shuddered, knowing the power of a curse made by our kind. "What are you talking about?"

"I vowed that you would never be able to keep your true love until I could keep mine," she smiled bitterly.

"You are being silly. I have my Lord, so obviously that boy is not meant to be with you."

She laughed disconcertingly. "That is probably the saddest part in this whole farce. You have lost your true love almost as many times as I have lost mine, but you are so wrapped up in your thirst for vengeance, so hungry for power, you can not even tell the difference between the fondness you have for our brother and the love you should have with the man you are meant to be with."

A chill went down my spine at her words, but I told myself she must have seen me with the Commodore earlier and was just using my reaction to him to enhance her tale. She sank onto a bench and pulled her legs to her chest, resting her forehead against her knees. "You do not have to believe me, now, but I know some day you'll realize the truth. I just hope you will allow us all to be happy then."

I woke from my dream, crying, holding myself like I thought I was about to fall apart, but I didn't know why. All I could remember was being pressed against a wall by an older version of Edward.

I drove to school, still needlessly upset, and parked next to the silver Volvo, determined to confront Edward for deliberately engineering the previous day's traffic jam. As soon as I took the key out of the ignition, my door opened, and a pale hand unlatched my buckle and gently tugged on my hand before I even looked at them.

I slid out of the truck, pulling my bag behind me, and as I looked up, my back was pressed against the side of my truck, reminding me of the previous night's dream. Edward leaned down, his hands on either side of my waist, his forehead against mine, causing my skin to tingle, and his emotions to jolt straight into my mind: desire, frustration, desperation.

"What are you doing to me, Bella?" Edward whispered, his eyes closed an inch from mine.

"You're the one who's trapping me." I responded, too overwhelmed to think beyond the obvious.

He laughed sardonically. "If only I _could_ trap you, keep you in a cage like a little bird I don't want to fly away…"

I shivered at his words, disturbed by how close he was to the truth, and how much I wanted to be kept by him.

He opened his eyes into narrow slits, just a touch of gold visible in a ring around otherwise black orbs. "I've tried to stay away from you like you wanted, oh how I've tried…"

His long fingers barely ghosted over my ribcage, but my body reacted like he was stroking much more intimate parts of me, and I clenched my hands into fists to keep myself from pulling his hips to mine. The desire in his mind was increasing, which fueled mine in return. He gazed intently into my eyes before stepping back.

I gasped with his loss, suddenly aware that I hadn't breathed in several minutes. My body trembled, wanting to touch his again, to throw itself on him, but I held back. He closed his eyes again and lifted his hand to pinch his nose in a gesture I was beginning to find endearing. "I'm sorry," he muttered, "I shouldn't have done that. It seems I can't even control myself around you anymore."

"So don't," the words popped out of my mouth of their own volition, but I didn't regret them.

He looked at me, his brows drawn, "Pardon?"

I didn't know where I was getting the courage from, but I continued, "So don't, Edward. Don't control yourself, don't stay away. Do what you want to do, what we both want."

He slowly reached out a hand to my face, carefully moving a piece of hair behind my ear with the barest touch of his cool fingers. I wanted to turn my face into his hand, to inhale his scent and kiss his palm, but I refrained. The first bell rang for class, but I couldn't look away from him.

"I want to buy you a hair clip, or some barrettes, or whatever it takes to keep you from hiding your face from me behind your hair ever again," he whispered fervently.

I smiled. "Go right ahead, but I'll warn you, my ears are too big for my face. They're really, freakishly huge. You'll probably regret your purchase."

He smiled back at me and traced my ear with his finger; I wanted to coo. "Liar, they're perfect."

I could have died of happiness right then, if it weren't for his next words.

"Bella, ask me to the dance."

My heart stopped. _Alright, where are the hidden cameras? Where's Ashton to tell me I've been punk'd?_

I knew he had heard me turn down at least one boy yesterday, and quite possibly heard me turn down all three, so what was he playing at now?

"I can't, I'm going to Seattle with my father that day," I reminded him.

"Reschedule," he stated, like it was that simple.

I shook my head, my face finally rubbing against his cool hand. "He would be too suspicious."

"Suspicious of what?" he asked incredulously. "That you have a date? Introduce me to him, parents always love me. I'm a very polite young man, or so I've been told," he said with a smirk, still playing with my hair.

I shuddered to think of my dad meeting Edward, knowing someone would end up maimed, or worse. "That's not a good idea. He's very protective of me. Besides, I don't know if going to the dance would be a good idea."

I could just see myself becoming overcome with lust while dancing with him and attacking him, doing naughty things to him in the middle of the dance floor. Maybe we should go to the dance after all.

Suddenly, he was holding something in his hand, and I realized it was my cell phone. Before I could say anything, he handed it back to me, and I saw I had a new entry, Edward Cell.

He stared at the phone as he spoke, his hands clasped in front of him. "I think the first time we spend time together should be in public. It would probably be safer all around, I would think, so call me if you change your mind." He looked up. "Or call me if you don't. Call me whenever you want anything from me, anything at all. Just call me."

He walked away from me before I could remember how to speak, and just as I remembered how to walk, the second bell rang, indicating I was late for class.

* * *

E/N: Please review! Got any questions, something(s) not making sense? Let me know! I'll either clarify right away or incorporate it later, or both! Also, if you want to discuss the fic, or the mythology behind it, or anything Twi related really, visit the thread on the Twilight forums.

http(colon)(slash)(slash)www(dot)twilighted(dot)net(slash)forum(slash)viewtopic(dot)php?f=33&t=3943


	7. Chapter 7 Satisfied and Empty

A/N: Guess what? You can still nominate stories for The Indie Twific Awards until Tuesday, June 23. Only stories with an average of 30 or less reviews per chapter (or 1000 reviews all together if the story is complete) can be nominated, so these awards are really, truly for the stories that do not have a lot of readership. This means it is really up to you to nominate a story if you like it, you can't just trust that enough other people will nominate so you don't have to. So, get on over there next week and nominate your favorite little stories that could. (BTW, C+S does qualify, hint, hint).

(http(colon)(slash)(slash)theindietwificawards(dot)com)

Thanks to Goldenmeadow (aka Rie) for the shout-out in her fic Dead Confederates, and if you're not familiar with Confeddie/Rebelward/Dirty Southward, well, you're missing out. He's to die for (tee hee) as is Rie's love affair with the English language.

Thanks to the folks at Project Team Beta for making me watch my p's and q's.

**Disclaimer:** **All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. In other words, I do not own Twilight.**

* * *

Chapter 7: Satisfied and Empty

The boy had made me late to class, but I couldn't manage to wipe the sappy grin off my face. With a quick glance to make sure no one was around to see me, I sped to class, only slowing to a human pace when I entered the building for English. I carefully closed the door behind me, hoping Mr. Mason would ignore me and just continue to write on the chalkboard, but of course, he spun around sharply as soon as he heard the faint click of the door latch.

His face was frowning as he turned to me, and I was certain he was about to spout some snarky comment, so I pasted on the most saccharine, charming, and contrite smile I could manage, all the while thinking repentant thoughts in his direction. His eyes glazed over, and his mouth drooped open slightly, and then after a second, he turned back to the board with a mumbled, "Please, have a seat."

I had to sit in the back since I was tardy, and Mike turned to me from several rows in front, mouthing lucky. I made an effort to answer questions and ingratiate myself to Mr. Mason for the rest of the period, and after class Mike and Eric walked with me to Government. The two boys started hyping each other up with plans to go to the beach during the weekend since the weatherman predicted clouds but no rain. I snacked on their energy as we walked, hoping to calm them enough to keep them from dragging me into the conversation.

I should have known my luck wouldn't last. They ganged up on me, insisting I had to go with them, and I feigned a smile, claiming I had to ask my dad, until Eric started creepily uttering, "La Push, baby! It's Laaaa Push!" I curled my lip in disgust and walked into my class without another word. Mike laughed behind me as Eric exclaimed, "What? What did I say?"

I spent the rest of the morning trying to solve the conundrum of getting Dad to accept Edward in my life, because I knew now that it was futile to even pretend to resist. Who knew that an aggravating undead boy could be so addictive? My mind raced down every avenue I could come up with, desperately wanting to find a solution that didn't involve us running away to Timbuktu, but inevitably I always reached the same conclusion: Dad was never going to be cool with the magnetism we had going between the two of us, whatever it was. However, I was mollified somewhat by my newfound knowledge that it wasn't one sided. He couldn't stay away from me, either.

As Jessica and I headed to lunch with Mike, they started in on the plans for the beach trip again, and I nearly groaned in frustration. Jessica assured him I would go, and she smiled at the glare I cast her way. She promised I wouldn't regret going and said I would be thanking her when it was all over. I snorted in reply as I pushed through the cafeteria doors.

The pull was coming from the wrong direction, and I stood on my tiptoes to find my favorite rumpled head of hair. He was sitting several tables away from his family, and he slowly smiled a daring grin once I located him. I looked to his regular table with a puzzled frown, and for once, Alice wasn't baldly staring at me. Instead, she watched me from the corner of her eye as she faced Jasper, while he whispered sweet nothings to her.

I looked at Edward again, still wondering why he wasn't sitting with his kin, and he lifted one hand, slowly crooking one long, slender finger, telling me with that simple gesture to join him. I shivered remembering the feeling of his fingers on my ribs earlier in the morning, and then I berated myself for swooning over a finger when I should have at least saved the reaction for his lips.

I grabbed my usual soda and told Jess that I needed to discuss some Biology homework with Edward, so I was going to sit with him. Her face fell, and because I'm a sucker for the crestfallen look, I told her that I had decided to go to the beach after all. She squealed and hugged me, jumping up and down. Old Bella would have crashed to the ground with the force of her enthusiasm. As it was, I still rocked a little with each of her jumps. She guaranteed that we would have fun and told me she'd call me after school to fill me in on the details and to plan what we would wear. "Great, I can't wait," I lied through gritted teeth and a fake smile that she seemed to buy.

I reached the table where Edward sat, his arms folded where his normal tray of uneaten food should have been. I raised a brow. "Not hungry today?" I couldn't keep myself from taunting him.

His lips twitched as he looked at my soda. "Nope. You?"

"I've got my caffeine. What else does a girl need?"

His lips parted, and his eyelids lowered, and heat surged through me at his unexpected, smolderingly seductive expression. His gilded gaze swept down my body, and my skin tingled like he was actually touching everywhere he looked. "What else, indeed."

My pulse sped, and I rejoiced that I couldn't blush anymore because otherwise, I would have been some horrid shade of magenta at that moment. My mouth went dry as I sucked in a deep breath, which just made my discomfiture worse when his luscious scent hit the back of my throat. I bit back a moan, and his lips curled up knowingly.

I melted into a chair before my legs collapsed. I dropped my eyes to the table, wishing I was more adept at flirtation so I could one up him at his own game. I licked my dry lips before chewing on the bottom one, trying to think of something to say to him. I heard a gasp across from me, and I glanced up to see him staring wide-eyed at me, bewitched by my mouth.

At first, I couldn't fathom what had caused such a reaction in him, but then I realized what I was doing when he gasped. I slowly ran the tip of my tongue across my lips again, and his eyes widened even further as he held his breath. I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth, nibbling at it a little for good measure, and he exhaled with a puff of his cheeks.

I couldn't keep the corner of my mouth from twitching up, and his eyes narrowed when he realized he'd been played. He looked up to my eyes. "You, you're wicked."

I smiled sweetly at him. "Oh, that's rich, coming from…" I didn't want to out him in the middle of a room full of grazing sheep, so I altered my thought. "…well, you."

We were both quiet, and questions ran through my mind, but I was afraid to ask most of them, not wanting him to question me in turn, because I knew I wouldn't be able to keep the truth from him if he asked outright. His beauty should be bottled up and sold to the military as a more effective replacement for sodium pentothal. Enemies of the state would sell-out their own mothers.

"Bella, can I ask you a question?" Crap.

"Sure." I tried not to sound uneasy, but I failed.

"I just want to know…" He paused, and then ran a hand through his hair. "Well, my family and I need to know, just how much do you know about us?"

I thought about how to respond, wanting to be honest, but not completely flagrant in our surroundings. I decided to tell him what I knew to be different about his family.

"I know you're supposed to have red eyes, but for some reason you don't. Do you all wear contacts, or use some extra strength eye-drops or something?"

He glanced at his family before responding. Alice was staring at us, her face a stone mask, and he quickly shook his head at her, an almost imperceptible jerk of his head. He turned back to me.

"It's our diet. We prefer furrier fare than…" He struggled for a moment, searching for an appropriate euphemism. "…other people."

I nodded, accepting that they would be able to survive on animals, too, but curious why they would bother when apparently other vampires didn't. I remembered what Dad had said about vampires hiding from our kind during the day, and although they didn't fear us anymore, I assumed they wouldn't want to be seen sparkling like a pageant queen's tiara around humans.

"Why do you come out in the daytime?"

He smiled. "Rumors of our combustibility have been greatly exaggerated." I smiled at his misquotation of Twain but shook my head.

"No, I mean I thought you wouldn't want to attract attention with all the glittery-ness."

He had the nerve to look affronted and then spoiled it with a smirk. "Glittery-ness isn't very manly, thank you very much. I prefer the term incandescence."

I snorted. "Yeah, you would."

"Bella Gertrude Swan, did you just snort?"

I went to slap his arm, but his other hand caught mine mid-air. The familiar jolt shot down my arm, and I breathed a sigh of relief as the pull in my chest relaxed. He turned his hand over and held my fingers curled up against his smooth, cold palm. I looked down, too shy to watch as he contemplated our hands like they held an answer. "Of course I didn't snort, you're imagining things. And my middle name is not Gertrude."

He started to rub his thumb against my knuckles, and I wanted to purr with contentment. "So, what is it?"

"Well, my first name is actually Isabella, and my middle name is Marie. What's your middle name?"

He became completely and utterly still, and I looked up at him. He was still looking at our joined hands, and his grip tightened for an instant, then relaxed again. Otherwise he was entirely immobile, not even breathing or blinking. "My full name is Edward Anthony Masen Cullen."

I thought for a moment, hoping he wouldn't retreat further into himself. "Was Masen your last name before you were… adopted?"

He nodded and began rubbing my knuckles again while he still looked at our hands.

"Was Dr. Cullen the one to adopt you?" It sounded ridiculous, but I didn't know how else to ask.

"Yes, Carlisle is my father in more ways than one."

I knew I was getting too personal considering we had hardly spoken in a month, but I was too curious not to ask. "Were you mad at him for changing your life like that? For taking you away from your real family? From the life you knew?"

His eyes tightened. "My parents had just died of the flu, my life was changed anyway. I was scared then, and there have been many times where I haven't embraced my current lifestyle, but I always knew Carlisle had the best intentions."

I nodded, knowing how important it was to know your parents had your best interests at heart. He looked up at me cautiously. "I don't want to press you, and please tell me no if you don't feel comfortable answering me."

I nodded, but I was still concerned, knowing my traitorous tongue would never be able to say that two letter word to him.

"Did you have to… go through some kind of adoption process?"

I laughed and shook my head. "We really need to have future discussions like this in a more secluded venue. No, I wasn't adopted. I am who I am by birth."

"So, you've been this way since you were born?"

"This way? You mean snarky, irritable and antagonizing? Sure, since birth."

He laughed with me. "You know what I mean: beautiful, strong, brilliant, talented."

I rolled my eyes, a habit I knew I should quit, especially since I'd just done it in front of the one person I wanted to impress. "Not exactly. Supposedly puberty is extra hard on people in my family, you know, unexpected changes in one's body." I could not believe I just said that to Edward Cullen.

He was puzzled. "Supposedly?"

"I guess you could call me a late bloomer. Nothing happened to me until I came to Forks."

Understanding blossomed across his face. "Ah, so that's why you came."

I shook my head, knowing we had already had this discussion. "No, I told you, I came to be with my father. Well, that, and I've always liked Forks more than Phoenix. Did Forks have a particular siren's call for your family? Some particularly tasty furry fare?"

He smirked. "Nope, and this might answer your earlier question. It rains almost constantly here. It helps to tone down the glittery-ness."

I returned his smirk. "You mean the incandescence." His smirk spread into a breathtaking, genuine smile.

"Exactly. Thanks for correcting me."

I sobered, not wanting to bring up the subject of my own powers again but knowing I needed to. "Thanks for not pressing me about my non-adoption."

Sincerity and respect radiated from him. "I don't want you to ever tell me anything because you feel compelled to. I need you to trust me, so only ever tell me what you feel like sharing."

I would have reached across the table and hugged him if I weren't afraid I would never let him go. I wondered how he knew how hard it was for me to say "no" to him. "Do you feel the same way? Like you have to do or say whatever I want?"

"To some extent, I suppose, but it's not as much like I have to obey you, more like my greatest desire is to give you whatever you want and need."

He made sense; it wasn't like I physically couldn't say the word "no" to him, it was more like it was upsetting to think of him not getting whatever he wanted. I wanted to test the theory a little, though.

"If I tell you to stand up on this table and give the school a strip-tease, will you?"

"No," he answered without hesitation before explaining. "Since it's all about my desire to please you, I could definitely say no. I've spent a lot of time ignoring my desires, so that part should be easy. However, if it were something you really, genuinely wanted, it would tear me up inside to deny you it."

I shouldn't have chosen a strip-tease as my example, because the images running through my head were making me squirm in my seat. Luckily, I was saved by the end of lunch bell.

We walked out of the cafeteria together, his left hand hovering just over the small of my back, as if he wanted to protect and steer me but didn't want to seem forward. Even though we weren't touching, I could feel the electricity passing between us as we glided through the crowd.

Alice stood in the middle of the sidewalk a few feet in front of the Science building, her feet squarely planted and her fists on her lithe hips. The other students skirted around her, their heads ducked away from her stare as the herd parted like the Red Sea for the immovable presence of her diminutive yet deadly frame.

We halted in front of her, and she and Edward stared at each other intently. Even without touching her, I could sense the nature of her thoughts: concerned, confused, and frustrated. I looked up at Edward, wondering if they too could communicate telepathically, but then he spoke.

"You see me going home early? It hardly seems like a cause for concern. I'll come back to pick you up."

His question when she hadn't spoken made me think he was either reading her mind, or they had developed some kind of incredibly subtle sign language. I hoped it was the latter, because if Edward could read minds, I might as well curl up in a ball of shame right in the middle of the sidewalk. They were staring at each other again, and his eyes narrowed.

"What do you expect me to do, Alice?" he hissed. "I can't just walk around on eggshells all of the time just because your brain is on the fritz."

She growled under her breath and then sailed away from us in a flurry of silk and scarves. Edward winced and called out softly after her, "Alice, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it!"

I felt like they had forgotten me during their nonsensical one-sided conversation, and I was glad because I wouldn't want Alice to turn her maelstrom of frustration on me. Edward sighed and turned to me. "Sorry about that."

He swept his hand out in front of us for me to continue walking. We were the last ones to enter our class, and Mike watched us worriedly as we passed. I smiled at him and he briefly smiled back, before turning a glare on Edward.

As we sat, Edward nodded in Mike's direction. "It seems like your boyfriend over there has some issues with us looking too cozy."

I glanced again at Mike who quickly turned around to face the front of the room. "Shut up, we're just friends, and he's just worried about me getting too close to the weird and exclusive Cullens."

He chuckled. "I wouldn't be too sure about that. In fact, I'm fairly certain if you buddied up with Rosalie, he wouldn't have a problem at all."

I thought of the standoffish and breathtaking blonde and the unlikelihood that we would ever be friends. "Well, I guess it's a good thing he has no say in who I'm friends with, then."

He leaned closer so only I could hear and with a sideways glance he whispered, "Or more than friends with?"

I shifted in my seat as I looked at his suddenly emotionless face. I turned to face the front, too but watched for his reaction in my periphery. "Or more," I said firmly.

A grin flashed across his face before he rearranged it into the bored mask he usually wore in Biology. Mr. Banner wasn't in the room yet, and Edward sat up straighter when we heard a rattling at the door. His eyes widened. "Damn it, Alice!" he breathed so quietly I almost didn't hear him.

Mr. Banner walked into the room carrying a box and began passing around items to every table. I caught what he was saying in the back of my mind, but I was too distracted by Edward's behavior to heed his words. I watched as Edward became immobile again, seeming to shrink into himself before he stopped breathing altogether. I was about to ask him what was wrong when Mr. Banner's voice finally intruded on my thoughts.

"Then I want you to carefully prick your finger with the lancet…" My head snapped in his direction, and I wanted to shout at him to stop, to launch myself out of my seat and push him away from Mike, whose finger he held as he lowered the lancet. For whatever reason, though, I stayed still, watching as the metal slid into the skin of the pad of his finger. I knew I shouldn't have, but I couldn't resist inhaling as the blood beaded, and saliva flooded my mouth.

I had been subsisting too long on emotions and small rodents, and suddenly human blood became my holy grail. Without a thought commanding them to, my calf muscles tensed, readying me to spring over several tables and tackle Mike, my friend whose scent was always overpowered by Edward's, until the moment his blood became the focus of all of my senses.

My toes were several inches off the ground when a cold, unbreakable manacle latched onto my arm, jerking me back and throwing me unceremoniously onto the ground by my seat. My head hit the tile with a crack and I looked up at Edward standing above me. I growled behind my gritted teeth before I snapped my teeth at his ankle, the closest part of him I could reach.

He hopped a little further away before whispering, "Stop it. Stay still."

I growled at him again, unthinking and feral, until his grip tightened painfully. I felt the small bones in my wrist sliding against each other, and my growl turned into a whimper. Edward quickly turned our hands, relaxing his painful grip slightly as he seemed to be checking my pulse.

Mr. Banner's feet appeared near my head, and I closed my eyes and whimpered once more as I felt my wrist bones shift again with an almost inaudible grinding sound.

"Did she faint?" Mr. Banner asked with surprised concern.

"Yes, sir. It sounded like she hit her head pretty hard when she fell." Edward's deceptive voice matched his concern, despite the fact that he was trying to pulverize my bones even as he spoke.

"Can you take her to the nurse's office?" Mr. Banner asked, shaken.

"Certainly." Edward released my wrist, but before I could move he had lifted me in his arms, crushing me to his chest, his left hand spread across my ribs and his right hand gripping my thigh so tightly, my sensitive hearing caught the sound of the tearing of the threads of my jeans beneath his fingers. To think, just that morning I had relished his slightest touch on me. Now his touch was painful, breaking me, yet I still turned my head to snuggle against his neck, basking in his aroma. God, I was one sick twist.

Mike held the door open, his face pale and worried as Edward carried me out of the room. Once we were out of the building, the truth of what I had done crashed down on me; I had nearly attacked my friend, and Edward had needed to stop me. The fact that he was still gripping me painfully as he hauled me across campus led me to believe he didn't trust me not to run back inside the class and rip into Mike. I began to plead, "Wait…"

Edward looked down at me in question.

"Please, don't hurt me," I whispered, hoping to not make him angry again.

His pace slowed as emotions raced across his face. I could feel that he was shocked and then horrified. "Bella, no! I was just trying to stop you from attacking your friend. I would never hurt you on purpose."

His voice was raspy, and his eyes squinted like he was holding back tears. I wondered if vampires even could cry. I pulled my damaged wrist close to my chest, cradling it with my other arm. "But you did hurt me. It's not like I was going to eat Mike." I didn't think I would, anyways. "You didn't have to hurt me."

He shook his head. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I just couldn't be sure of your strength, or your fragility. I swear I didn't want to hurt you. Will you be okay?"

I lifted my shoulders, not wanting to upset him any more. "I had worse breaks before I changed, and I always bounced back quickly. I'm sure I'll be good as new in no time, so we really don't need to go to the nurse's office. You can put me down."

He shook his head but smiled apologetically. "The nurse should see you so you can get a note to stay out of class. I would hate to have a repeat performance."

Ashamed, I lowered my eyes and nodded in agreement. We had reached the administrative office, and a freshman girl held the door open for us with her mouth agape as Edward carried me inside. Ms. Cope stood with a gasp.

"She fainted in Biology. We were doing blood-typing today, and she hit her head." His voice held just the right amount of concern.

Ms. Cope's eyes travelled from my head against Edward's shoulder to my cradled wrist that was already turning an angry shade of crimson. "I think I sprained my wrist when I fell," I whispered pitifully.

She tsked and fretted as she opened the door to the nurse's office for us. The nurse looked up at us, startled, and quickly hid her paperback novel, but not before I could make out the illustration of a barely clothed couple on the cover. Edward explained our version of the situation again as Ms. Cope left, closing the door behind her.

The nurse checked my pulse on my unbroken wrist, stating that my pulse was racing, and then gently pressed at the back of my head, asking if it hurt. I claimed it was a little sore, and she nodded. She then had me hold up my wrist as she prodded it. I managed not to hiss at the grandmotherly woman as she declared it was at least sprained, if not broken. She advised that I have it x-rayed to be safe, and I nodded in agreement. She opened a drawer and pulled out an Ace bandage which she tightly secured around my wrist.

Edward had been leaning in the corner, his arms crossed, but he suddenly stood up straight when we heard the sounds of more people entering the outer office. Ms. Cope appeared in the doorway. "If you're done, we need the bed. We've got a bleeder."

Edward said he'd take me outside so I wouldn't faint again from the sight, and I closed my eyes and held my breath as he swept me up. I could feel that he was holding his breath too, until we walked outside into a slight drizzle. He sat me down on a bench and sank down next to me.

"Well, that was eventful," he half-heartedly joked as he ran a hand through his hair.

I looked down at my wrist, hoping Coach Clapp would let me sit out in gym so I wouldn't hurt it anymore playing basketball. Edward reached out a hand, lightly caressing my knuckles as he sighed. "If you want, I can go see if Ms. Cope will give you a pass to get out of school for the rest of the day."

I nodded, disturbed again at the thought that he might be able to read my mind. He stood and went inside but reappeared quickly with a note in his hand. "Ms. Cope already took the precaution of calling your father. He said he couldn't be here for at least an hour and asked you to call him if you couldn't make your own way home."

I groaned and rubbed my hand over my eyes, hoping Dad had just assumed I was getting out of class to avoid the blood, and not that I was mauled by our friendly neighborhood Strigoi Morti. "I'll have to go to the station and give him an explanation so he doesn't think the worst."

"Are you sure you don't want me to take you home? You can always call your father once you're there, and Alice can drive your truck home later. It won't be comfortable to drive with a broken wrist, especially since your clunker doesn't have power steering." He cast a disapproving glance at my baby.

"Hey, leave her out of this. I'll be fine. Besides, my dad would flip if he smelled a vampire in my truck."

His eyes narrowed in thought as he looked at my truck again, and I realized I had let too much information slip.

"So, I guess I'll see you in class tomorrow."

He turned back to me. "Actually, you won't. Emmett and I are going hiking this weekend; we're getting an early start tomorrow."

Vampires who hiked? What was the world coming to? Unless hiking was code for hunting…

"Do you have to go?" I sounded too desperate. "I mean, a bunch of us are going to the beach at La Push this weekend, and I was wondering if you wanted to come along. We could hang out in public, like you wanted." And Charlie shouldn't be suspicious if my friends picked me up, and Edward met us at the beach later.

He smiled like we were sharing an inside joke, but I was clueless when he spoke. "I'm not exactly welcome in La Push, you know, and yes, I really do need to go hiking."

Ah, so it was code, then. "I guess we'll just have to figure out something else." I paused, staring at his feet. "Bye."

I felt his hand tentatively brush my hair off my forehead, and I could feel his longing. His desire and my desperation proved too much for me. How could he still want to be with me, knowing now that I couldn't control myself, and I put everyone around me at risk? In the meantime, he had not only controlled himself in class, he had restrained me, too. I was so perplexed and saddened that tears were prickling my eyes, and then his cool lips replaced his fingers on my brow. I closed my eyes as the tears spilled over, trailing down my cheeks as evidence of the destruction he wreaked on my sanity. "Goodbye, Isabella Marie Swan. We'll see each other soon."

I kept my eyes closed as he stepped away, keeping them closed as the crunch of gravel indicated that he was racing away from me. I didn't open them until he started his car, and then I didn't watch as he sped out of the lot. I climbed into my truck and wiped at my face with my good arm, then started the truck.

On the short trip to the station, I planned what I would tell Dad, trying to think of something that wouldn't be a complete lie because he'd probably see through it if it was. When I walked into the building, he was sitting out front, joking and flirting with the ladies. He turned to me with a smile as I approached, but when he saw my face he frowned. "Bells? Are you okay?"

His gaze zeroed in on my bandaged wrist, and his eyes were hot with anger when they met mine again. He pointed an accusatory finger at my wrist as he asked, "What happened?"

I gestured towards his office and followed him inside. As soon as the door was closed, he turned on me. "Was it them?"

"Chill, Dad. It's not what you think. I had to get out of class, they were blood-typing. Everyone thought I fainted, so I went to see the nurse."

"And your arm?" he gritted out.

I had the sense to look sheepish. "I just wanted to test my own strength." Against Edward's marble fingers. "I know it was immature, sorry."

He sighed. "Don't I have enough to worry about without you deliberately hurting yourself?"

I scuffed my boots against the ground. "I know, sorry."

"So, why were you crying?" He sounded perplexed.

I made my way to the guest chair, thinking, and decided to give him the reason I should have cried instead of the truth. "I almost killed my friend today," I whispered.

He sat, too, watching me. "Bells, I'm sure you wouldn't have actually killed him. You stopped yourself, didn't you?"

"Dad, I wasn't even thinking of him as a person. It was close, too close." I knew I owed Edward an apology. He had been right to stop me; he would have been in the right if he'd broken every bone in my body. "Dad, can't we hunt bigger game? I don't think it would have been such an issue if I'd eaten anything besides squirrels in the past month."

He crossed his arms, leaning back in his archaic chair. "I'm sorry, Bells, but we can't hunt large animals in the area or we risk raising suspicion. I'll take you away to hunt as soon as I can, but with Julie out on maternity leave, and since we still haven't found a replacement for Don since he moved, I just don't have the time. Heck, I'm going to be here at least until midnight tonight for the third time this week. But if you feed off of energy enough, you should be fine."

This wasn't the answer I wanted. Since I had nearly killed the prisoner a month ago, I had been very careful to not take more than just a smidge of energy from any one person. Dad had assured me that the man was fine; he'd even straightened up his life, claiming his near-death experience made him realize that life was too short to not do right by your loved ones. I still wasn't taking a chance of it happening again.

I looked out Dad's one tiny, dirty window into the greenery of Forks, the town I still loved dearly, despite everything. I felt like Edward's presence made me love it even more, and I wondered if his being here had resulted in my desperate need to move here, or if it was just my looming change. As a child I had always wanted to move in with Dad, but I definitely hadn't been willing to blackmail my mother over it until recently. I was reminded of my talk at lunch with Edward, how he didn't seem to think that my desire to be with my father was the only reason I was in Forks.

I looked to Charlie curiously. "Hey, Dad? Why did Papa Swan move to Forks in the first place?"

He was tinkering on his whirring old computer and didn't look at me as he answered. "Hmmm? Oh, he was always interested in our children and grandchildren, why some turned into different animals than we preferred, why some chose to live in swamps, or snow tundras. He heard about the Quileutes turning into wolves, which isn't heard of in our kind, and before you ask, no, we're not related to traditional, moon-controlled werewolves. He came to check them out, struck up some friendships, and decided to stick around."

He was still concentrating on his computer screen, probably playing solitaire, based on the way he moved the mouse, so he didn't see my jaw hanging open. After several silent minutes, I finally found my voice. "That beast we saw in the woods? Dad, that wasn't a wolf, that was a…" I waved my hands in the air to indicate its massiveness. "I don't know, a yeti?"

He finally looked at me, perplexed at first, but then realization crossed his face and he chuckled. "Yetis are more like people covered in really long hair. That was a wolf."

My eyes nearly popped out of my skull. "Yetis are real too?"

He shrugged. "Don't know, never seen one, but would it really be that surprising, all things considered?"

"Guess not," I muttered.

He shook his head in amusement. "I can't believe you didn't say anything sooner about the wolves. I didn't even think about the fact that you couldn't hear Jake and me communicate."

I'd been distracted, too busy obsessing over a ridiculously handsome vampire to notice something as "common" as giant wolves who happened to actually be people.

"Do they feel the same way about the vampires as…" I swallowed at the lie in my words, "we do?"

"Yes, but for different reasons. They blame the Cullens for making most of their boys change into wolves for the past couple of generations. They think their supernatural presence brings out the wolf in them. Papa and I had a theory that we contributed to some of that, but don't you utter a word of that to anyone. After all, the Cullens just came back to the area a couple of years ago, according to the Quileutes."

"Back? I thought you didn't know about the Cullens until last month."

His jaw tightened. "Billy was holding out on me. Didn't want me getting involved in 'tribal matters.' He didn't think about the fact that he was putting my little girl's life at risk."

I had wondered why I hadn't seen Billy since I moved in, and why Dad had stopped hanging out with him on the weekends. When I lived with Renee, it seemed like Dad and Billy were always doing things together. I had just assumed Dad was too busy at work to go visit.

"I'm sorry; I don't want you to fight with your friends because of me."

He smiled at me sadly. "Ah, Bells, it's not your fault. We're just two grumpy old men, we'll be alright."

He changed the subject, insisting I take at least some energy from the fellows in the holding cell, saying it would make my wrist heal faster. I complied and left with a promise to be asleep by the time he came home.

Once home, my thoughts naturally turned to Edward. I had become complacent, forgetting that he and his family were at least as strong as I was and could still hurt me. In the past day or so I had even convinced myself that there was no way we would ever hurt each other, especially once I realized that he felt the same desire to make me happy that I felt for him. I knew he hadn't meant to break my wrist, but he did nonetheless, but perhaps more importantly, if I could have reached him, I would have bitten a chunk out of his leg without a qualm. We were going to have to be much more careful, before we completely destroyed each other.

* * *

E/N: Please review! Got any questions, something(s) not making sense? Let me know! I'll either clarify right away or incorporate it later, or both! Also, if you want to discuss the fic, or the mythology behind it, or anything Twi related really, visit the thread on the Twilight forums.

(http(colon)(slash)(slash)www(dot)twilighted(dot)net(slash)forum(slash)viewtopic(dot)php?f=33&t=3943)


	8. Chapter 8 Man's Best Friend

**Disclaimer:** **All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. In other words, I do not own Twilight.**

_**A/N: Okay, I know my updating is sporadic, but I promise I post as soon as a chapter is written and beta'd. Expect Ch. 9 to take at least until July 10 to post, possibly later. Thanks to Priscilla and jfairman of Project Team Beta for being GOGs (goddesses of grammar) and forcing me to make sense occasionally.**_

* * *

**Ch. 8- Man's Best Friend**

I was still sitting at the kitchen table, thinking of the conundrum of Edward's and my relationship, loudly tapping a pencil against the bulbous red eye of the tree frog on the cover of my Biology workbook. He looked quite tasty, like a colorful little lollipop, and I knew I needed to eat before I went back to school and faced poor, unaware Mike.

The sound of the house phone ringing broke into my thoughts, and I glanced at the clock, wondering who could be calling. It was a little past four o'clock. I had been sitting and tapping and thinking for nearly two hours, and by now, Jessica would be home and wanting to discuss the beach trip. I contemplated letting the answering machine pick up, but knowing Jessica's persistence, I decided to get it over with and talk to her.

She would pick me up Saturday morning, and we would go to Newton's Olympic Outfitters to meet up with everyone else. The kids with the largest vehicles would drive us to the beach, and she had already scored us the front seats in Mike's suburban; I hoped she didn't notice how fake my "Yay!" sounded. I helped her decide on her outfit (purple sweater and jeans, because no, it wasn't warm enough for the cutoffs and halter top she really wanted to wear), and she asked me what I planned on wearing. Of course, I'd given the matter no thought whatsoever, so I vaguely told her I would wear jeans and a t-shirt (though she seemed to want me to wear a mini-skirt, as if I would ever willingly show off my freakishly pale legs). She sighed but grudgingly assured me that even in a potato sack I would look "hot."

She proceeded to tell me that she had heard about my accident in Biology, and I told her that I had only sprained my wrist. She had also heard that Edward took me to the nurse's office, and she grilled me about our lunchtime conversation and wanted to know every detail of my fainting spell and what it was like to have him "carry me to my rescue like a knight in shining armor, or a really hot fireman." I grimaced at the phone, even though she couldn't see me.

I tried to play it off like it was all no big deal. I told her it was all rather embarrassing, really. Apparently she wasn't quite convinced, though, because in the end she quietly asked me if I would be sitting with her or with Edward at lunch the next day. I laughed and promised to sit with her, but I knew it was only because Edward would be out of school the next day, and I just hoped she wouldn't realize it when she saw that he was absent.

It was a quarter 'til six when we finally hung up, and when I looked out the window into the gathering dusk, I decided to fly out alone to eat, despite Dad's rules. I told myself that my scare earlier in the day justified a little rule breakage, but if I was being honest, I knew I just wanted to see Edward again before Monday. I went upstairs, unlocked and opened my window. I let the clean outside air fill my room, my lungs, and my head. Night fell in a cloak of oranges and pinks, the sun's last rays bowing out over the treetops, and I knew this was the magic to which I belonged.

Dad had called us children of Nyx, the goddess of the night, but it was in the moments when I waited to become Swan and launch myself into the darkness that I best understood this sentiment. My desires to soar across the star-littered sky and prowl upon the creatures that scurried below me were only superseded by my absolute need to be near Edward.

With only the light of the moon streaming through my window, I slid against the wall, out of sight from the ground, and took my clothes off before turning into Swan. As my body shrank, my focus narrowed, any excess emotion falling by the wayside. Swan didn't deliberate and didn't need to think things through; she had a purpose and nothing would stand in her way.

I ambled to the window, hopping up and out before I spread my alabaster wings, their combined span wider than most men were tall. The wrist area in my wing was still a little sore when I moved it, but there was no longer an aching throb like I had felt in my human wrist. I cut through the air like a torpedo through water, and the moisture that was ever present on the Olympic Peninsula gathered on my back and fell off my tail-feathers. I felt refreshed, newly baptized, and my pleasure only heightened when I finally reached the Cullens' home.

The dying strains of a song I didn't recognize reached me from high above. Even though I only caught a few bars, the sound coming from the piano echoed in my mind, and I equated it with Edward's spicy scent, and the succulent flavor I imagined his soul would have. Human Bella would have cried; instead as Swan I trilled, happily filling the silence left by the end of the song, cheering in my own way at my beloved's mating call, but not wanting to ruin it again with a blasted honk. I had learned my lesson.

Even though I was quieter this time, the front door opened again. I silenced myself, still circling several yards above the three story house, and watched. The family exited, two by two, like they were embarking before a flood, Edward following up at the end, a lone creature without a mate, his hair the color of rust by the light of the moon. I quietly landed on the roof, partially hidden by a chimney.

Emmett and Rosalie stood furthest out in the clearing in front of the house, embracing like they couldn't stand to part, the tall blonde resembling an imperious snow queen more than ever. Alice and Jasper stood slightly to the side, politely watching the first couple, and a handsome blonde man and a chestnut-haired beauty spoke to Edward near the door.

The man, who I assumed was Dr. Cullen, shook Edward's hand while firmly patting his back in a fatherly gesture. Then, the woman next to him reached up and wrapped her slender arms around Edward's neck, pulling him down for a hug. I quietly hissed, though the touch was much more maternal than intimate.

When the woman released him, Edward moved on to Alice and Jasper, where the slender man shook his hand in a formal manner. Edward turned to Alice, and she was wringing her hands. They stared at each other a moment before he whispered, "It's alright, Alice. Stop worrying."

She jumped, a kitten next to his lion, but she managed to wrap her arms tightly around his neck, and she hung onto him for a second before he wrapped his arms around her with a laugh. I didn't like her touching him either, though she was more familiar to me in an unpleasant way. He eventually lowered her to the ground and went to slug Emmett in the shoulder.

Rosalie backed away with her arms crossed and pouted. Emmett and Edward tussled, punching, hair mussing and laughing, until Mrs. Cullen called out to them, "Boys! If this is how you plan on behaving the whole trip, maybe you need a chaperone!"

The two men stopped and turned to her in surprise. Emmett recovered first and bent over with a guffaw. Edward spoke for both of them, "It's alright, Mom, we'll behave ourselves."

Emmett's laughter quieted, and he stood up straight. He looked at his collected family members, especially the women with their varying visages of sadness. "Come on, guys! It's only a couple of days. We're not moving to another continent or anything."

Edward nodded to Rosalie. "They know we'll be back soon, they're just not thrilled about putting up with Rosalie while you're gone."

She glared at him before turning and stomping into the house. Emmett sighed. "Did you really have to say that, man?"

"Yes, because now instead of being sad and missing you for three days, she'll be mad at me, something she's used to anyway," Edward muttered with a smile.

Mrs. Cullen smiled but shook her head. "I do wish you wouldn't provoke her so, dear. I'll go check on her." She walked into the house with a slight wave.

Jasper lifted a hand, and Alice waved too as they followed Mrs. Cullen. Only the patriarch and the two departees remained. "Good luck hunting, boys," the doctor jovially called out. "Enjoy yourselves. Things here will keep until you get back."

I believed he mostly spoke to Edward; Emmett seemed like he'd enjoy himself at his own hanging. With one last nod, Dr. Cullen walked into the house. The men watched him, still as two sentinels, and I watched them in turn. Emmett turned to Edward, his face splitting in a boyish grin. "Hey, whadya say we race?"

Before he could respond, Emmett was gone, leaves floating in the air marking his passing. With a shake of his head, Edward took off after him. My impulse to chase could not be staunched. I catapulted off the roof, a feathered blur of a projectile. I shot through the treetops above Edwards head, keeping up with every turn, every burst of speed.

Edward quickly passed Emmett, and his unexpected speed reminded me of the strength he had displayed earlier in the day. Underneath my human veneer, I always wanted to taste him as it was, but the reminder that he hurt me solidified my plans in my current Swan frame of mind. Though my memories of my past life were hidden, I knew that once, very few would have dared try to harm me, and those that did were taken down immediately. If I couldn't take them by myself, I would raise an army and have them begging for leniency, which of course I never gave. Swan wanted Edward to pay almost as much as she wanted to swallow him whole, and Human Bella could not rein her in.

I plunged, a bullet headed straight for Edward's burnished locks, but somehow, just before I reached him, I managed to clear my head of vindictive thoughts, and I pulled my legs up, leaning back to slow my momentum. Edward happened to duck at the same time, perhaps having heard me swooping down. I tumbled into the undergrowth several yards away. I scuttled behind a large tree and craned my neck around it to watch Edward as he scanned the forest around him. Emmett had come to a halt next to him, and while he looked around, too, he tried to tell Edward what he had seen from his position several feet behind.

"Dude, you just got dive-bombed by a huge freaking bird!" Emmett was, of course, laughing, finding more humor than the situation warranted.

Edward cast him one irritated glance before continuing his perusal of the surrounding trees. I shrank further into hiding, hoping my body would remain hidden by the tree and my black beak would remain camouflaged. Edward spoke without looking back to his chortling brother. "Did you happen to see what kind of bird it was? If it was so 'freaking huge,' I doubt it could remain hidden for long."

I glanced around me, wondering if I could waddle away from them without being caught, but the trees weren't quite close enough to hide my bright white body. I looked back at the tall men, and Emmett seemed to be concentrating as he stared at the back of Edward's head. "See? It was really swift, what do you think? A goose? Maybe a trumpeter swan? Aren't they down from Alaska for the winter?"

Edward seemed to only be half listening as he peered intently at the space around me, still looking several feet above my head. "One wouldn't be this far inland. The swans stay in the coastal waters." He paused, and his posture stiffened. His eyes widened as some glimmer of understanding dawned on him. His eyes dropped, meeting mine, and I became utterly still, not even breathing.

"The Swans…" he whispered in awe and then busted out laughing. He doubled over, clutching his stomach, his eyes squinted closed.

"Ummm, Edward? Are you okay?" Emmett seemed perturbed by his brother's outburst.

Edward turned to him, noticeably trying to control his laughter. He placed a hand on each of Emmett's broad shoulders and looked him in the eye as he continued to chuckle. Shaking his head, he responded, "It's just so obvious, I can't believe I didn't realize sooner."

He continued to shake his head until he realized that Emmett was still watching him like he'd gone mad. His laughter quieted, though he still smiled. "I'm great, Emmett, but maybe we should stop racing for now." He took his hands off the large man and turned. He began to slowly stride away, continuing in the direction they had been running.

Emmett looked annoyed, knowing he was out of the loop. "Do you mind if I ask why?"

Edward turned, but his eyes met mine instead of his brother's. "Because I'm not running away." My brain filed this statement away because Swan Bella didn't care if her food/beloved knew what she was; it was Human Bella's job to worry about things like that.

Our gazes were locked together, until Emmett walked between us with a sigh. "Whatever, man. Let's just go, I'm hungry."

Emmett disappeared out of sight among the trees, and Edward looked after him before turning back to me, winking cheekily, then following Emmett.

Once they were out of hearing range, I began to waddle through the forest, back in the direction of the clearing in front of their house. Luckily, I managed to find a fox, his dark auburn fur standing out to my perceptive eyes against the greenery. He smelled like wet dog and didn't taste much better, but I didn't expect anything to be appetizing after reveling in Edward's scent.

I made my way home and became Bella again, and once I was in the shower, I took the time to analyze Edward's reaction to the idea that a swan had attacked him. Did he know it was me? And if he did, did he know the truth, or was he just guessing at my true identity? He seemed to find it amusing, whatever conclusions he had drawn, so I couldn't find the energy to worry about it too much. I gratefully crawled into my bed once I was clean and fell into a dreamless sleep.

When I woke, rain was drizzling down my window, and gray clouds pressed in making the sky look like a low ceiling. I smiled, certain that the beach trip would need to be rescheduled, preferably to a day when I already had plans, though my calendar was pretty much empty at the moment. Maybe I could find a book club, or a quilting bee, or heck, an AA meeting, anything really as long as I didn't have to sit around pretending to be friends with people who didn't really like me while I tried not to eat them.

I thought of Mike and frowned. Maybe Mike was a true friend, but I definitely couldn't trust myself around him. While I wasn't quite comfortable calling her a friend, Jessica was, for some reason, obsessed with me, and if she hurt herself around me and started bleeding, I would probably make a meal of her, and I would feel at least a twinge of guilt.

I looked at the wrist bandage curled up like a snake on my nightstand where I had left it before my nocturnal foray. My wrist barely bothered me at all, and putting the wrap back on it would probably irritate it more than help it, but too many people knew that I supposedly sprained my wrist, so I sighed and wrapped the bandage tightly around it. I secured it with the little metal teeth, went downstairs, grabbed the coffee Dad had left for me, and headed out.

My truck rumbled into the school parking lot, and Mike hurried over to open my door, Jessica close on his heels. "Jess said your wrist was sprained when you fell. How'd you drive this thing?" he asked with a frown.

I smiled at his concern. "It's not that bad, really. I'm not sure it was even sprained, it's hardly even sore now."

He continued to frown at my bandage and muttered, "Well, you could have at least called someone to give you a ride."

I patted his arm as I smiled and said, "I promise, I hardly even notice it." _Geez, I nearly ate the boy, and he's broken up over my wrist? I'm a terrible person, a terrible daemon, a terrible… whatever, I'm terrible._

I looped my un-bandaged arm through my backpack and corralled my friends toward the buildings. I was almost to the sidewalk when the silver Volvo came flying into the lot. I paused, my heart fluttering in hopes that Edward had changed his mind after all, but once I could see clearly through the windshield, I realized that it wasn't Edward behind the wheel but rather spiky black hair that barely cleared the steering column.

The car slammed to a stop within feet of me, and after a second the diminutive, demonic diva honked the horn at me in triplicate, using both hands, no less. I thought about flipping the bird but decided to act like the bigger person, and I turned away as I stepped onto the sidewalk, not looking back at the Volvo as I walked to class. I realized with an ounce of contrition that I had been standing in the middle of Edward's normal parking spot, so maybe she had the right to honk at me for standing in the way gaping at her, but I certainly wasn't going to apologize for my actions.

Throughout the morning, Mike talked about the beach trip the next day, and though I shot pointed glances at the cloudy sky, he maintained his faith in the weatherman. At lunch, Jessica tried to make me solidify my plans for the outfit I would wear on the beach trip I was certain wouldn't happen. When I was still vague and non-committal, she began to throw out ideas based on what she had seen me wear to school. I tried to participate in the conversation, but I was bored stiff.

Of their own volition, my eyes gravitated to the Cullens' table. Rosalie's back was to me, and Jasper and Alice were arguing, but their whispers sounded like hisses from my seat across the room. They stopped and simultaneously turned to me like they felt my attention. Alice smiled at me, and if I didn't know better, I would have thought it was sincere. She lifted a hand and waved me to her. I frowned and turned my gaze back to Jessica, but not before noticing that someone else had caught our brief exchange.

Lauren was looking back and forth between Alice and me and grinned cruelly as she spoke, "Why don't you go sit with your friends the Cullens, Bella? After all, you **are** almost as much of a freak as they are."

_Cow did NOT just say what I think she said._

Mike looked at her angrily and opened his mouth to speak, but I interrupted. "Why Lauren, then I wouldn't get to sit so close to you, and we both know that would be a crying shame." I winked at her, imitating Edward's best seductive smirk.

She blinked her pale, fishy eyes at me a few times, before her face turned purple in embarrassment and fury. Everyone else at our table outright laughed, even Jessica, though she turned her back to Cow so she couldn't see her well.

Lauren stood up from the table, leaving her tray for someone else to clean up, and walked out the cafeteria doors with twenty minutes left of lunch. Spirits at our table seemed to be lifted in her absence, and my suspicions were confirmed that her oppressive presence was the main reason most of my lunch-mates stayed quiet every day. Even quiet Angela added her input in our lunch plans for the trip. I almost felt sad that we wouldn't be able to go. When the first bell rang I felt so pleased I even picked up Lauren's tray so no one else would have to juggle two.

My pleasure faded when I looked up and saw Alice next to me at the tray window. I tried to make a hasty retreat, but she firmly grabbed my arm. I could sense she was feeling regret and a strange mixture of shame and fear, so I gave in and turned to her. "Yes, Alice? May I help you?"

Her eyes narrowed at my overly polite tone, but she released my arm. "I just wanted to talk to you for a minute. Why did you ignore me?"

I shrugged. "You have yet to say anything to me that I wanted to hear."

"But I've only ever said things you needed to hear."

I crossed my arms and shrugged again as I looked in her eyes, the same disturbing shade as Edward's.

"Look, I know we didn't get off to the best start-" I quirked an eyebrow at her understatement. "I wanted to say, I hope you'll forgive Edward for hurting you." She gestured to my wrist and then mirrored my stance, her arms crossing over her tiny middle.

I would have rolled my eyes if I hadn't promised myself I would stop. "There's nothing to forgive, I thought I made that clear to him."

She looked down at the ground, and her lip pouted out just a little. "Maybe you did, but he was mad at me last night, blamed the whole thing on me."

Exasperated, I wished I could read her mind so I could just tell her whatever she wanted to hear and be on my way. "What does it have to do with you?"

She looked at me in surprise. "Do the two of you just sit and stare at each other googley-eyed all the time? Don't you ever talk?"

I turned on my heel to leave, but she stopped me again, this time just placing an arm on my shoulder and muttering, "I'm sorry." She meant it, so I turned back to face her.

She crossed her arms again, and I wondered if she knew I could feel her emotions when she touched me, since she seemed to always touch me just when my knowing her true emotions would help her case.

"Edward and I have certain abilities, and our family depends on them, too much if you ask me, to keep us all safe. You, and maybe your father, seem to be the exceptions to all we thought we knew about those abilities. You're the wild card, and we can't make any definitive plans for our future if you're involved."

I wondered if she was referring to their silent communication and started to ask, when she continued. "I guess it's Edward's place to talk to you about it, and I suppose he'll feel comfortable once you trust him enough to talk about yourself, but please don't drag it out too much longer. You're putting us all at risk the longer you wait, yourself included."

It was more than she had said to me since I moved here, so I knew it must be important. I nodded, and she gave me a small, relieved smile.

It quickly faded, though, into a quizzical frown. "I promised Edward I would try to at least be civil towards you, but I can't help feeling like there's something I'm supposed to know about you, some crucial fact I've forgotten somewhere along the way, and to be honest, it terrifies me." She smiled sadly and then whispered. "Maybe you ran over my dog in a past life, eh?"

She turned and walked away from me, out the cafeteria doors. She had sounded like she was joking, but I couldn't help wondering how much Alice really knew. A shiver ran up my spine like someone was dancing on my grave, but I shook it off and ran to Biology before the late bell could ring.

Saturday morning, I woke to the harsh sound of a fist banging against my bedroom door. "What?" I whined.

"Bells, your friend Jessica is on the phone. She wants to know what time she should come by to pick you up." He sounded confused, and my eyes popped open in surprise.

I looked over to the window at a sight I never thought I would see in Forks in March. The sun was shining, only a couple of white, fluffy clouds in sight. I groaned; the trip was on, apparently, and I hadn't even bothered to ask Dad's permission to go since I hadn't thought it was possible.

I slunk out of bed, pulling on my robe as I opened my door. Dad handed me the portable handset and I leaned against my doorjamb. "Jess?" I asked incredulously.

"Hi, Bella! Will you be ready in thirty minutes? Your dad thought you were still asleep." She laughed, like she couldn't imagine anyone would actually want to sleep in on a Saturday.

I tried to inject some false cheer in my response. "Yeah, I'll be ready in thirty."

"Okay! I'll see you then! And remember, we decided on the light blue shirt with your tight jeans."

"Gotcha." I had no idea what clothes she was talking about.

I heard the dial tone and turned off the set. Dad looked at me questioningly. "Some kids at school planned on going to La Push this weekend, but I didn't bother to mention it since I didn't think there was any way the sun would actually come out today." A tiny beacon of hope lit in my mind. "Of course, I guess if it isn't safe for me to go, I can call Jess back-"

He smiled, shaking his head. "Oh, no, it's safe. The Cullens aren't allowed on the Quileutes' land."

My own smile faded, and I sighed. "Guess I'll get dressed then." I started to push my door open when I noticed that Dad was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, huge aviator sunglasses, and the official Forks PD jacket he never wore. "What's with the get-up?" I swirled my finger around to indicate all of the extra accessories.

He chuckled. "Don't know about you, but I have no intention of looking like I was hit with a gamma ray when I go outside?"

I looked at him in confusion. "What?"

"We glow in the sun, Bella." He spoke matter-of-factly, like it should have been obvious.

"Nooo," I said slowly, "You said it was the vampires who sparkle."

"Right, the vampires sparkle, we glow. Remember that black-light unicorn poster you used to have in your room here? The way the colors would look like they were lit from behind when you turned on your special lamp? You insisted on taking it back to Phoenix with you, but you didn't have a black-light there and you thought the poster was broken."

Great, I would look like I'd been swimming in toxic waste. "But you never said anything about us hiding from the sun like the vampires, back in the day."

"Back in the day, humans worshipped us. We didn't care if they saw us all lit up."

"Well, what the heck am I supposed to do? I guess I'll have to call Jess and tell her I can't go today, but are you going to get me out of school every time the sun shines?"

He smiled, mockingly. "Think again. You'll go with your friends today; you'll just cover up appropriately." He smoothed down his jacket and my mouth dropped open in horror.

"I'll burn up in long sleeves today!"

"Well, kid, you win some, you lose some." He turned and walked down the stairs, tossing the phone in his hands as he went.

I wanted to throw a temper tantrum, but I quietly closed my bedroom door behind me as I stared dejectedly at my closet. I pulled out a pair of jeans, assuming they were the tight ones Jessica thought I should wear, and also grabbed the only light blue shirt in my closet. I then hunted down my lightest-weight long sleeved shirt, and I grimaced when I realized it was a My Chemical Romance hoodie with a bitten apple on the front and snakes down the sleeves. I doubted it would garner Jessica's stamp of approval, but at least I wouldn't have to find a hat to go with my ensemble. I dug around in the purse hanging in the back of my closet until I found my one pair of sunglasses, a retro, bug-eyed pair that Renee had bought me, insisting they were "all the rage." I couldn't remember ever wearing them before, so at least they would come in handy now.

I pulled on my Docs before I left, figuring Jessica was already going to be sickened at my appearance and no one else would care, so I might as well be comfortable. I walked downstairs and Dad was leaning against his spot on the counter by the coffee pot, where he always seemed to be the few times I had made it downstairs before he left for work.

He held out a cup of coffee to me with a chuckle, and I fought not to smile as I took it. I hadn't bothered to look in the mirror before I left my room, certain I looked a fright, so it didn't surprise me that he would laugh at me. _Laugh it up, Chuck. I just bet you don't escape a comment or two on your Super Trooper costume._

I heard a horn honk outside and finished off my coffee before heading outside with a wave. Jessica was touching up her lip gloss as I slid into her car, so she didn't look at me right away. When she did, she shrieked, "What are you wearing?"

I shrugged. "I'm cold."

She shook her head. "Oh, no, Bella. You don't even wear a jacket in the snow, and I was wrong."

"About what?"

"You do not look hot in that. You look like the Unabomber."

I stuck my tongue out at her and flipped down the visor to look in the mirror. Okay, maybe she was right, but there really wasn't much I could do about it.

She sighed. "At least you're wearing make-up, and you better be wearing that cute blue shirt under that thing."

I didn't bother to tell her that I wasn't wearing any make-up, but I did assure her I was wearing the blue top, though I didn't plan on anyone else seeing it that day. She turned up the volume on the hormonally charged pop music she had in the CD player, and I gritted my teeth during the short trip to Newton's Olympic Outfitters.

I couldn't get out of the car fast enough and hurried to Mike's suburban, but I had to wait for Jessica so she wouldn't have to climb over me to sit in the middle of the front bench seat. I turned to tell her to hurry up, but she was walking funny, as if she were trying to shimmy her slim hips as she walked. It seemed to be having some effect on Mike, so I turned back to the suburban with an eye roll. I just couldn't resist it.

I said, "Hi," to Angela and Eric but stopped when my gaze landed on Lauren, who glared back at me. I wondered if anyone actually invited her or if she just showed up. She turned and whispered to a girl from my gym class who had once been on the wrong end of my new wicked volleyball spike. She had a black eye for days, and she shrunk back in her seat now as my gaze landed on her. The menacing outfit probably wouldn't improve her opinion of me.

Jessica finally clambered into her seat, and I slid in behind her, slamming the door closed once I was situated. The trip was probably no more than fifteen minutes long, but I could hear Lauren making catty comments about me to her neighbor even though she whispered, and the trip seemed infinitely longer. I wished that banging my head against the window would make me pass out, but I knew that more than likely it would just crack the glass.

When we rolled up at First Beach, I lifted my sunglasses for a moment to clearly see the breathtaking view while I was still in the protective shade of the suburban. The landscape was resplendent in varying shades of gray, a silver-screen version of what one normally assumed a beach should look like, from the white-gray driftwood, to the lilac and blue-gray and green-gray rocks, to the steel-gray ocean. Only the sky wasn't gray, and I knew for a fact that was a rarity. This was the beach of my childhood dreams and fantasies, not the beach in California Renee forced Dad and me to meet at in more recent years.

I was out of the car first, and as I climbed down to the beach, I heard Mike calling out for me to mind my wrist. I waved so he would know I heard him and continued on my way. The coastal wind whipped around me, and my hoodie was no longer so uncomfortable. I carefully stepped around the larger rocks farthest from the water, occasionally bending to pick up small rocks for skipping. I carefully placed the rocks and my subtly glowing hands into my hoodie pockets as I made my way back up the beach.

The rest of the group had made it down and were setting up a few folding arm chairs while Mike lit a fire in a stone circle in the middle. Blue and green flames began to lick up the driftwood, and I watched as the fire grew. Suddenly, I heard the sound of a man yelling, carried on the wind. I jerked my head around and looked at the nearby cliffs, where a man was diving head-first into the freezing water below. His lean copper-skinned form sliced cleanly through the waves, and soon his black-haired head bobbed up again. He laughed and waved to his friends on the cliff-top who laughed in return.

"Daaaaaaammmmnnn," Tyler whispered next to me, before turning to the other boys excitedly. "Guys, guys, we gotta try that!" He pointed vigorously at the next man preparing to dive. I'd never been one for extreme sports, but if the sun weren't out, I would have wanted to join in. It was probably the closest thing to flying I could get to in human form.

The other boys turned to watch the man dive, and their jaws dropped open. "Nuh-uh, no way Tyler, especially not when the water's this cold," Mike said while watching in awe.

Tyler was all bravado, but I could practically smell the undercurrent of fear running through him. "C'mon, guys. If they can do it, we can."

The other boys negated him as well, and I picked up a sense of relief from Tyler. I wondered what he would have done if they had actually gone along with it, or if he'd only brought it up to look tough because he knew they would say no.

The guys and some of the girls decided to hike down to the tidal pools, and I decided to go with them since I had always loved them as a kid, and because Lauren was staying by the fire since she hadn't deigned to wear appropriate footwear.

We hiked through the nearby forest for a short way until we came back out on the beach, and we had almost reached the pools when the girl from my gym class slipped and cut her hand on a piece of sea glass. It was just a small cut, but the facts that I was standing upwind from her and had eaten just the previous night were probably the only reasons I didn't jump on her. As it was, I still drained a little energy from the group as everyone settled in to watch the teeming life inside the pools.

I sat alone at the smallest pool farthest away from the girl, and as I stared into it, I remembered pretending to be a mermaid while my father watched me. The tiny silver fish would dart around my flapping legs, and Dad would laugh with me. I wondered what it felt like to him, watching me pretend to be a magical creature when all along he knew I would someday be a creature of a very different kind.

Perhaps because of the energy I had stolen, it didn't take long for the boys to start complaining that they were hungry. We walked back through the forest and as we exited back into the sunlight, I glanced behind me at the forest with longing. I wondered if anyone would notice if it took me a little longer to get back to the fire, if I could change form quickly, sneak a bite to eat, and then meander back to the group.

"C'mon, Bella, aren't you hungry?" Mike called. He and Jessica waited for me, several yards behind everyone else.

I stifled a sigh and smiled pleasantly instead. "Yep, on my way."

When we neared the fire, I heard Mike mutter, "What the…"

I looked up to see what had grabbed his attention and was surprised to see the men from the cliff standing with our friends. There were five of them, and standing next to the boys I knew, they appeared enormous, well over six feet tall. They all wore nothing but cutoff shorts and had identical short, spiky hair cuts. Most surprisingly, however, was what I smelled in the wind when it swirled around the fire and back to me.

Beneath the wretched scent of the charred hotdogs on the fire, I smelled wolf, but not just any wolf, the shape-shifter Dad and I had encountered a month ago. The second tallest man stood by the fire chatting with Eric, slightly bent over so they could hear each other well despite the height difference. He popped a final bite of hot dog in his mouth, and then his head snapped up. He looked at the tallest man across the fire who was gesturing towards me, and then he turned to face me. His head tilted to the side as he looked at me like a curious dog. Then, he straightened and his face broke into a face-splitting grin.

As I watched, he bounded towards me and then lifted me in what would have been a rib-cracking hug for a normal person. I squealed and he set me down, his face all happiness and sunshine. He finally noticed that I was looking at him like he'd sprouted horns, and his smile turned into a perplexed frown. He bent down close to me and whispered so only I could hear. "Bella? Can't you hear me?"

I looked at him, equally perplexed, and whispered back, "Now that you're talking I can."

He smiled like I had told a joke. "Well, I guess we'll have to talk like normal folks. Don't you remember me?"

Dad had said the shape-shifter we met was named Jake, and I had assumed he meant Billy's son Jake, who I remembered being a couple of years younger than me, definitely not a full grown man. "You're Jake, right? I'm sorry; I didn't catch your last name."

He frowned again. "It's Black, Bella, Jacob Black. I'm Billy's son. You mostly played with my older sisters, but you honestly don't remember?"

I stared at him with incredulity. "Jake, how'd you get to be so huge?"

He looked around at the mixed company and whispered, "You know… puberty." He raised his eyebrows to convey his meaning.

_Ah, I get wings; he gets at least a foot in extra height. _I whistled as I looked him up and down, and I meant it as an exclamation at his sheer massiveness, but his friends took it as an excuse to make wolf-whistle noises. He blushed and then looked up at them sharply, meeting each of their eyes until they stopped, and I looked away.

Unfortunately, I looked right at Lauren, who was watching the exchange with scornful amusement. "So, Bella, I was just saying to Tyler what a _crying shame_ it is that no one thought to invite the Cullens. Surely, since you seem so close to them lately, I thought you would have at least been polite enough to mention it. To Edward maybe?"

She sneered as she said the last part, staring at Jake as she did so. I could feel him bristling beside me. Was Cow actually trying to cock-block me? Or whatever the equivalent was for bitchy teenaged girls? If I'd actually been interested in Jake, I might have used it as an excuse to take her down once and for all.

"Do you mean Dr. Carlisle Cullen's family?" Jake's taller friend asked.

Cow looked up at him, "How…"

"The Cullens do not come here," Jake interrupted in a tone that brooked no argument and then smiled down at me. "Hey, wanna go for a walk?"

I didn't bother to mention that I had just come from a walk, because I really did want to get away from the crowd and its senseless masticating at the moment.

As we walked back toward the forest, I took some of the rocks out of my pockets to skip and offered him a few. He watched my glowing hands as he took the rocks, and I started to tuck them back in my pockets, but he quickly reached out and grabbed one of them, turning it over as if he were examining it. "That glowy thing you do looks better on you than your old man."

I was glad when he released my hand, because his touch was beginning to make me uncomfortable, though it wasn't entirely unpleasant. We skipped rocks in silence for a moment before I spoke. "That guy, the tallest of your friends? He seems pretty authoritative. Is he somebody important or something?"

Jake was still quiet for a little while. "He used to be the leader of our pack, our Alpha."

They had a pack? I wondered how much they emulated their wolf personas in their day to day lives. I hardly ever thought of Swan during the day, and I certainly didn't know much about the practices of real swans, other than what I had briefly researched.

"What happened?"

He continued to skip stones without looking at me. "My father is the chief of our tribe, so when I…" His throw went wild as he chunked the stone in his hand too hard. "…changed, I became the Alpha."

That seemed like a heavy burden for anyone, to lead a pack of shape-shifters, but it seemed especially tough for a fifteen year old boy, even a gigantic one. "Couldn't you both be Alpha?"

He looked down at me with a smile. "Now, Bella, you can't have two number ones," he uttered in a ridiculous redneck accent.

I laughed, "Whatever, Ricky Bobby. I guess I still don't have a hang on all this mystical crap."

His smile grew, and he clasped both hands over his chest and dropped to his knees, letting the rocks he had been skipping fall. "Be still my heart, you're up to snuff on your Will Ferrell movies and you're already a part of 'all this mystical crap?' Will you marry me? Like, now?"

I laughed along with him, though I was beginning to get uncomfortable again. "Don't be silly. You may not look your age, but I'm pretty sure I'd get in a whole heap of trouble if I tried to marry a minor. Besides, how would it look for my dad? 'Police Chief's daughter kidnaps and marries local youth.'"

He smiled and stood up, wiping off his legs. "Well, you can't blame a boy for trying."

We were close to the forest when I turned to him again. I hardly knew the kid, but I would hate to ruin what could be an honest friendship by accidentally leading him on. "Jake, I hope we can be friends, but, well, there really can't be more between us."

He laughed. "Oh, don't worry about that, I know."

He knew? Did he pick up on Lauren's Edward comment? Could I convince him not to tell Dad?

Before I could say he anything he continued. "Charlie told us about it before you even came here." He lost me, but kept talking without looking at my dumbfounded expression. "Besides, we have this, I don't know, power, I guess? We call it imprinting. Whenever we meet the person we're supposed to be with, it's like BAM! The world just stops spinning and starts revolving around that person instead. We would do anything to be with that person, and no offense Bella, but I don't feel like that about you."

That was a relief, I supposed, but his description of imprinting sounded eerily familiar. My entire universe had been centered around Edward from the moment I met him. "Jake? You can talk to my Dad telepathically, right?"

"Well, we can talk to each other when we're in our animal forms, but he can hear me when we're human. Why?" He didn't understand my change of subject.

"Has my dad ever had you show him something? Like something you've seen, or felt?" I felt like I was onto something.

"Sure, once or twice." He was beginning to sound suspicious.

"I'd just like to understand this imprinting thing better. Do you think you could show me what you're talking about?" I tried to plead with my most innocent expression.

He wasn't completely falling for it, and he shrugged. "Well, I've never experienced it myself…" I continued to give him my wide-eyed, pouty face, and he sighed, rubbing a big hand across the back of his neck. "A couple of the other guys have, I guess I could show you their memories."

I tempered my excitement and looked at him questioningly. "You can show me their memories? Is that because you're the Alpha?"

He shook his head. "We all share each other's memories. It's a bit like being in a three ring circus, sometimes, but it comes in handy."

I remembered Dad mentioning that we had once done the same in ancient times, so I supposed it made some weird, magical sense. "Okay, I'm not as good at this as my dad, so it might take a couple of tries, and you'll really need to concentrate on what you're showing me."

He nodded, and I reached out a hand and placed it on his leanly muscled arm. We both closed our eyes, and momentarily I began to see flashes, outlines of images in neon yellow, green and orange, and the sounds were garbled. I wondered if the images weren't solidifying because they were memories of someone else's memories, or if it was because our connection wasn't as strong as mine and Dad's.

Soon, however, the images seemed to slow down, and I realized he was scanning through, trying to find exactly what he wanted to show me, like he was rewinding and fast-forwarding a DVD. The image he stopped on was in full color but still seemed to have a fuzzy glow around the brighter colors, but when the vision started playing, I no longer noticed the quality.

_We were in a school hallway, telling our friends that we would meet them after class. We felt excited, and superior, and like we owned the school, the tribe, the whole world. That is, until we walked into the classroom and saw Kim. She was sitting at her desk, turned toward one of her own friends, politely listening. We had never really noticed her before, she was just another of the girls we had grown up with. _

_We had hardly even spoken to each other, had never really had anything to talk about, but when she laughed at her friend's story, her voice rang out, a clear, firm, joyful bell-like peal. Her white teeth flashed against her perfectly curved lips, and her long eyelashes swept across her cheeks. _

_We made a noise, something between a sigh and a groan, and her eyes fluttered open as she looked at us. She blushed, delicately, like she had just a second of a dirty thought, and we wanted to move mountains for her. We wanted to re-align the planets, re-route roads to spell her name, whatever she wanted, it was hers. Being the kind, gentle creature that she was, though, all she wanted, had ever wanted, was us. _

My throat felt constricted with tears as Jake began searching for another vision. I knew exactly how Kim's lover felt about her, and though I was only experiencing it third hand, it still seemed to pale in comparison to my feelings for Edward. Yet, it was more pure, because it wasn't tangled up with fear, and mistrust, and danger.

Jake had found the vision he sought, and it began playing before I realized what I was seeing.

_Our lips pressed against a minty mouth, our girl, our Leah. She was warm in our arms, already losing her girlish softness as she filled out into womanly curves. We moved our lips away from us to nuzzle her tender neck. She was excited, liking the recent changes in our body, the height and muscle making her feel protected. She curled into us, pressing her firm, high breasts against our chest, sliding her hips against ours. _

_We were on the couch in her living room, waiting for her mom to get home with her aunt and cousin, a girl we had met long ago who seemed far too uppity for our tastes. Leah's father and brother were at the Blacks' house, so we had a precious few minutes alone. We started to maneuver her so that she was lying on the couch, and we briefly wondered what would happen if her relatives walked in and caught us in flagrante delicto. _

_We would just have to be quick but still somehow make it good for her. We sat up, reaching in our back pocket for a condom, and she arched her back, making her nipples pucker the thin fabric of her old t-shirt. We forgot the rubber for a moment as we reached out to tweak her teasing nibs, when the door opened. She slapped our hands away and sat up faster than we had ever seen her move, her face dark maroon and mortified. We were almost afraid to face the door, certain we would see ole Harry standing with a double shot rifle pointed at our head. _

_When we finally did turn to look at the intruder, what we saw was so much worse than an angry papa. We saw the uppity cousin, who no longer seemed at all uppity. She was the most beautiful tropical flower, a slow song in the rain, a breath of clean mountain air, and just like our new favorite hobby, cliff jumping, we fell, but this time, there were no cool waves to catch us, we just continued to fall, in an endless drop, in a never ending effort to reach the core of her soul. _

The vision faded, and my hand fell from Jake's arm as I opened my eyes. "Yikes," I whispered.

He chuckled darkly, "Oh, you have no idea. So, did you learn what you wanted to know?"

I nodded, wondering if showing these memories to Dad would help him understand what was happening with me and Edward, or just make him more determined to keep us apart.

Jake interrupted my thoughts. "Hey, are you hungry? Want to head back?"

I grimaced. "Nah, hot dogs aren't really my thing."

He smiled. "Let me guess. You like to eat raw, like Charlie. Would've never pictured you as a raw kind of gal."

I returned his smile. "Like father, like daughter."

He grinned mischievously. "Well, let's go then." He nodded toward the forest. "We can even make a little competition of it. I'd love to see you take down something larger than a squirrel."

My smile faded. "I'm not supposed to hunt large animals in the area. Dad's afraid we'll draw attention."

He shrugged it off. "You're on our land now, and we hunt here all the time, it won't be reported or anything. So, you up for it, or are you gonna chicken out?"

I laughed. "I'll take down something larger and more dangerous than you do, but what do I get if I win?"

He smiled, certain he had already won the bet. "A lifetime of mechanic's service on your truck from yours truly. What do I get if I win?"

I wasn't even concerned. "For a year, you can come over whenever you want and watch whatever you want on the flat screen."

He looked amused. "That's your dad's, not yours."

I shrugged. "Yeah, it's easier to make bets with things that aren't yours."

He laughed loudly then spit in his hand and held it out to me. I looked at it in disgust. "Ummm, no thanks."

He laughed again. "Alright, we can skip that part." He started to walk into the forest, and I followed him until I thought of one teensy little issue.

"Hey, Jake?" He stopped and turned to me. "Do you think I could go in first and come back for you once I've changed?"

He was controlling his laughter. "I knew there was going to be some kind of girly rule."

I frowned. "Geez, I just don't want you to see me nude."

He waved me forward, politely turning his back as he waited. I ran about a quarter of a mile into the woods, just in case, and found a tree with a low branch for me to place my folded clothes. I shifted and flew back out as swan. I landed awkwardly in front of Jake, and he smiled. "I give the landing a three."

He turned and ran into the forest, and I soared back into the treetops. By the time I found him, he had shed his shorts, and even from my position in the treetops, I could see each finely etched muscle contract and release in his back and thighs as he ran in a crouch. He was definitely going to make some lucky lady very happy some day. I felt like was like I was watching him through a haze of heat rising off a hot tarmac. The air around him shimmered as he suddenly swelled, and his skin seemed to roll away from his body as fur appeared. It was disturbing and looked painful, but he just kept running, dropping to all fours as he became more wolf than man.

I turned my attention to finding the largest prey I could, and it didn't take me long. A tawny colored mountain lion was lounging on a branch about halfway up an ancient fir. I circled for a minute, figuring out the best angle of attack, and then pulled my wings in close so I could be more aerodynamic as I swooped for the kill. I opened my beak wide, hoping to break his neck with the impact and drop him to the ground thirty feet below to eat him once he was very much dead.

I was a foot away when his ears pricked and he turned his large head to face me. His topaz colored eyes startled me, but not nearly as much as the blood-curdling scream that left his wide mouth as my beak connected with his neck. With his head turned I couldn't make contact the way I had planned and there was no swift-killing break, but rather a paralyzing fracture by the sound of it. However, I did manage to push him off his thick branch. He continued to scream as he fell to the ground, occasionally hitting and breaking a smaller branch on the way. I made a spiral path down so that I could smoothly land next to him. His body lay broken, twisted at odd angles, and I hoped the fall had done what I hadn't managed to do and actually killed him so he wouldn't be in any pain.

I bit into his shoulder, and as I pulled a piece of flesh off, I heard a soft mewl. I looked at his head, and my fears were confirmed. His eerily familiar eyes were glazed with pain, but they were still aware. His heart beat softly, but steadily. I never wanted to cause him agony, and I felt Swan's normally analytical mindset give way to Human Bella's empathy. For the first time I comprehended that I was a sentient being inhabiting an animal's body, and I should treat my food source with more respect. I stretched my neck until I could clamp my beak around his larynx. It took several minutes, but his heart finally stopped. I moved back down and continued to strip him of his flesh.

I heard a large animal moving towards me, and I lifted my head. I sniffed and knew it was Jake. He stepped from behind a tree, carrying the head of a six point buck in his mouth. He saw me and blinked in surprise at my catch. I blinked back in understanding. We both knew who had won, though my victory felt hollow.

He shuffled away, and I continued eating. When I had finished with the fleshiest parts, I stopped, completely full. I silently meandered back to the beach near the tide pools to clean myself. Other swans, real swans, were already bathing in the shallows, but as I approached they scattered with honks of reproach. Their flat, black eyes glared at me balefully, and I wondered if they didn't trust the smell of mountain lion on me, or my own scent.

When I reached the water, I saw my reflection and changed my mind about what was making the swans nervous. Blood dripped down me like a red silk tie down my long swan's neck. I dunked and rolled in the water, and though I was soon white as snow again, I still felt dirty for some reason.

I flew out of the water and made my way back into the forest and to my clothes. Once I had changed and thoroughly covered my skin, I stepped back out to the beach where Jake waited for me, sitting on the ground in his cutoffs and skipping stones. "I guess we should head back," I muttered with a sigh.

He nodded without looking at me and stood. He shoved his hands in his back pockets as he walked next to me. "I guess you won," he mumbled. I sensed he was uneasy, and I patted his back to find that he was also ashamed that he had underestimated me, and curious about my strength as an ally.

I nodded in return, keeping my eyes on the fire ahead of us. He slowed as we got close and turned to me. "You know, you can come out here anytime you want. That was always the agreement we had with your dad, since he's my dad's best friend and all."

I smiled sadly at him. "Yeah, maybe some day they'll stop being two stubborn old fools and remember that."

He smiled in response and nodded. "It was good to see you again, Bella. I really hope you'll come back and hang out sometime soon."

"Me too, and I will." It was unexpected, but I had really enjoyed myself with Jake, until I became maudlin over killing the mountain lion.

He waved goodbye as I continued to the fire, and he nodded to his friends who followed him away. When I reached Mike, he was looking at me incredulously. "What?" I asked with suspicion.

"What were the two of you doing for so long?"

I shook my head, wondering at his line of questioning. "Just catching up. We grew up together."

"The two of you just up and disappeared, then the girls thought they heard a woman scream, and I tried to convince them it was just a mountain lion, but even I was starting to worry that he'd drug you off to kill you."

I didn't like the conclusions he'd jumped to about my new friend, but I gritted my teeth and laughed. "Well, I'm here now, so I guess he's not an axe murderer after all."

We left soon after, and luckily everyone was exhausted by the outing because the trip home was quiet. Jessica dropped me off in front of my house and told me to make sure to tell her what I discussed with Jake on Monday. I told her I would, but she seemed like she might be tired enough to forget about it.

I took a long shower, hoping to get the lingering feeling of blood off of me. It helped some, but I finally had to accept that it was more of a mental filth than a physical one when the water turned cold. I had my robe on and had wrapped my wet hair in a towel when I walked to my bedroom. I closed the door and leaned against it, closing my eyes in fatigue.

I turned around to face the mirror, wanting to check once more that there was no blood on me before I went to bed. When I opened my eyes, though, I didn't see myself in the mirror. Instead, I saw Alice Cullen in my doorway, absorbed like she had no idea I was even there.

I squinted, realizing something was off. It was definitely Alice standing before me, but she appeared to be a few years older than when I had seen her the day before, and her hair was a little longer and in a curled updo, which she was now taking down pin by pin.

She wore a white floor length nightgown, old-fashioned and simple, yet delicate and lovely. I realized that behind her, instead of my hallway, there was a large bedroom, with a huge four-poster bed taking up most of the space.

I realized with shock that Alice wasn't in my doorway at all; she was actually inside my mirror. She hummed softly to herself as she removed he pins from her hair, then picked up a hair brush from a table to her side and softly began to brush her hair.

A door behind her in the mirror opened with a bang, and the brunette woman from my visions appeared behind Alice. Only her eyes were visible, the rest being blocked by Alice's own body in the reflection, but her eyes spoke volumes. They darted all over the room, searching for something, but seeing nothing.

Alice paused mid-stroke. "Issy?" she asked softly.

I was surprised. She was Issy? I thought I was Issy.

The woman's eyes finally stopped their rapid shifting and met Alice's in the mirror. "What did you do? Tell me how you did it, Lyssa?"

_Mad Lyssa, who probably made the first vampire. _

She put down the hair brush but continued to play with her hair with her fingers nervously. "I'm not sure what you're referring to."

The brunette's eyes narrowed in anger. "Do not you dare lie to me. How did you change your pet?"

Alice became angry. "Don't call him that. You of all people should know he is so much more to me than that."

The brunette's face crumpled as tears began to stream down her face. "Please, Lyssa, I have to know, before it's too late."

Alice looked at her regretfully. "I'm sorry; I don't really know that I did anything special. I just bit him while he was still alive. Maybe it's something only I can do. I wish I had a better answer."

The tears stopped as quickly as they came, and the brunette looked furious. "You wish? _You_ wish???" She threw her head back and laughed, and over the top of Alice's head I could now see that her mouth was red, her chin too, and what I could see of her neck was scarlet red with what appeared to be blood.

She slowly advanced towards the mirror, and Alice's eyes widened in response. The red mess flowed down passed her neck, down the front of her own white gown, stopping near her knees in jagged drips. Her eyes no longer met Alice's in the mirror. Instead they stared above her, deeper than the mirror, into another dimension.

"Do you know what I wish, Lyssa?" she asked in a girlish voice. "I wish you would forget."

"You don't mean that, Issy," Alice whispered in response.

"Oh, but I do." She giggled, but then her voice took on a sibilant, hissing quality. "You will forget. All of your past, your memories, will belong to me. You may keep your future. All of your plans, all of your schemes to get your way, you can have them, though they'll mean little to you when you have no past to inspire them."

"Please don't do this, Issy." Alice's voice shook.

The brunette's skin had started to glow, and an ethereal wind was lifting the locks of her hair as her burning stare gazed into the mirror. "It is done, and you no longer have the right to call me by that name. It is only to be used by siblings or friends, and you are neither to me now. I am only your Goddess now, and you will call me by my proper name."

Alice visibly shook now, fat tears making wet tracks down her pale cheeks. "Yes, Nemesis."

* * *

E/N: Please review! Got any questions, something(s) not making sense? Let me know! I'll either clarify right away or incorporate it later, or both! Also, if you want to discuss the fic, or the mythology behind it, or anything Twi related really, visit the thread on the Twilight forums. .?f=33&t=3943 (http(colon)(slash)(slash)www(dot)twilighted(dot)net(slash)forum(slash)viewtopic(dot)php?f=33&t=3943)


	9. Chapter 9 The Way We Were

**A/N: Voting for the Indie Twific Awards is open and goes through Monday, July 13. You do not need to have nominated initially to vote now, and these are the small-time fics that NEED YOUR VOTES! The Cygnet and the Strigoi has been nominated for Best Alternate Universe WIP and Most Original Storyline WIP. Some of my faves have been nominated too (Dead Confederates, Comeuppance, Windows, Ars Moriendi, As Fate Would Have It, Bad Habit… the list could go on and on) and we all need your votes, so go on and vote!**

**http(colon)(slash)(slash)(slash)vote(dot)aspx **

**Thanks to Kelly and Alyssa of Project Team Beta for their mad grammar and punctuation skillz, for forcing me to clarify and for their encouragement along the way.**

**WARNING: THIS STORY IS RATED 'M' FOR A REASON! IF YOU ARE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO BE READING A RATED 'M' STORY (UNDER 16 YEARS OF AGE ACCORDING TO FANFICTION(DOT)NET) DO NOT READ THIS CHAPTER!!! Don't make me go all Momma Bear on you, Grrrr!**

**Disclaimer:** **All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. In other words, I do not own Twilight.**

* * *

**Ch. 9: The Way We Were**

_Alice visibly shook now, fat tears making wet tracks down her pale cheeks. "Yes, Nemesis."_

I crossed my gooseflesh-covered arms over my chest, trying to comfort myself as the brunette approached us from behind. She was close enough that I could actually feel the preternatural wind that whipped her hair when, although I was terrified, I spun to face her head on.

Of course, when I turned she was gone, as was the large, gas-lit boudoir. Only my small, dark, and empty bedroom remained. I crept to my bed, my eyes darting about the room, half afraid that someone would jump out at me. I crawled beneath my covers, still wrapped in my towels, and just as I pulled the comforter to my face, planning to pull it completely over my head, I glanced at the mirror on the back of my door.

It was as dark as the rest of the room, but I could still imagine Alice's scared and crying face staring back at me. I didn't know if my confused and fragmented mind could be trusted. Was Alice really Lyssa or was I just projecting Alice's attitude toward me onto my memories of Lyssa? I did know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what I had seen was definitely a real memory and not just a daydream, but I couldn't figure out why it seemed to be from Alice/Lyssa's point of view and not Issy's.

For that matter, why didn't Issy look like me? Sure, we had the same color eyes and hair, the same basic shape, and apparently we looked enough alike that Edward thought I was trying to draw a self-portrait when I sketched her after seeing her in the snow, but there was something intrinsically different in our eyes. No matter how angry or how hurt I might be my eyes could never hold the flinty hardness of Issy's stone-like glare. At least, I prayed I would never grow that cold. I shivered, burrowing myself deeper under the covers. I tried to sleep, but my mind kept replaying the scene in a continuous loop, trying to find the key to releasing more memories, but to no avail.

Dad arrived home a little after six in the morning, having worked a triple shift to make up for his missing employees. He quietly shut the door behind him and carefully made his way to the bathroom, probably trying not to wake me, not knowing I hadn't slept all night. After he showered he lightly rapped on my door, softly calling, "Bells? Are you awake?"

I whispered a confirmation and he opened the door a crack. "Hey, there. Just thought I'd take a quick nap this morning then we can start work on the kitchen."

Last week, I had finally convinced Dad to strip off the cracking, peeling, sunshine yellow paint Renee had haphazardly slapped up on the cabinets all those years ago. He had sanded and primed them earlier in the week while he was home waiting to go in to his night shift, and today we had planned on painting them. I struggled to smile for him and nodded, but he frowned as he took in my watery expression.

"Are you okay? You seem upset."

I sighed, glancing away from his face and at the mirror before tapping my forehead. "Memories, light the corner of my mind." I forced a grin, and he grimaced and then chuckled. Dad has never been a Streisand fan.

"Wanna talk about it?"

I shrugged, really hoping to put the whole thing out of my mind for now and get some rest. "Later? Once we're both awake and functioning?"

He nodded. "Okay, don't let me sleep past noon."

"Aye, aye, Chief."

He shut the door behind him and I heard him go into his room. For some reason, just knowing he was in the house with me gave me some sense of calm, even though the monster I was afraid of was in my head, not my closet. I fell asleep and dozed for a few hours, waking before ten. I pulled on a t-shirt and shorts but I hadn't brought anything old or worn out with me from Phoenix, so I hoped I didn't spill any paint on me.

I walked out of my room while pulling my hair, crinkly and wild from letting it dry while it was still wrapped in a towel, into a pony-tail as I walked, carrying the elastic holder in my teeth. Dad walked out of his room as I passed, rubbing his eyes. I mumbled a muffled "Morning," and headed downstairs.

Once we were satisfactorily caffeinated we went to work putting the first coats of cream paint on the cabinets and midnight blue on the doors. We made a competition of it and managed to dart about at our supernatural speed, running around and painting until twenty minutes had flown by and we had to pause to let the paint dry before we could apply another coat.

We sat in the living room in comfortable silence for a few minutes and I picked at my cuticles as I tried to decide what to say to my dad first. When I looked up at him he had an eyebrow raised, waiting for me to begin.

I sat up straight, gathering my thoughts. "I saw Alice Cullen last night." He frowned and I rushed to explain. "In my vision. I think she was supposed to be Lyssa. Does that make any sense to you?"

Regret flashed across his face. "Yes, we believe Alice is Lyssa reincarnated. Thane thinks she shouldn't remember being Lyssa because she was turned into a vampire before she had an opportunity to come into her powers, but with Lyssa, one never knows. Her memories haven't surfaced with any of the other reborn sisters that we know of, so she may have them, and who knows what she's plotting this time." He said the last part angrily, and I shivered.

"That's just it, though, Dad. When I saw her last night, it was like it was through Lyssa's memories, not Issy's." I would almost prefer that I was stuck with the woman's memories if having them meant Alice didn't and couldn't use them against us.

He seemed surprised, and then looked calculating. "Huh. You were closer to her than anyone, I suppose, the one most betrayed by her actions. I suppose it's only fitting that you would end up with her memories." He whistled low and shook his head in amazement.

"Her actions? Are you talking about her making the first vampire?" It seemed like an awful long time for my dad to hold a grudge over something she might not have even done on purpose.

He looked at me with a bitter smirk. "I wish that was all. Bells, Lyssa betrayed us to the vampires. She is the reason you were killed, why we had to be reborn. She was angry with us for taking away her pet vampire, for keeping her from him when he kept turning up in different incarnations; so she conspired with the vampires to have us decimated. Hopefully she's happy now that she has her little pet warrior for eternity."

He sounded desperately tired and I stared at him in surprise. No wonder he didn't think the Cullens' presence in Forks was a coincidence. I thought back to the memory Dad had shown me of the first vampire, and though he was far away from me and his back was turned, I could believe that it was Jasper. However, I couldn't reconcile the sad, scared girl I had seen in my vision last night with a vengeful Judas. Issy, on the other hand…

"Dad? Why didn't Issy look like me? Or, I guess, why don't I look like her? And why would Lyssa call her 'nemesis'?"

He looked perplexed, but tried to answer. "What do you mean? She looked like you. I mean, she was you, you look like you… What did she look like in your vision?"

I bit my bottom lip, trying to find the best words to describe the difference. "She looked hard, Dad. She looked mean, and jaded, and, well, _evil_."

He looked back at me with pity and reached over to give my shoulder a brief squeeze. "It must have been because you were seeing her through Lyssa's memories. Lyssa wasn't quite sane, especially at the end. She was once a goddess of madness, after all. She probably saw all of us as monsters, keeping her from having her way."

I nodded sadly. I had felt bad for the girl last night, and in a way I felt worse for her now. I hoped that Alice actually could find happiness without being tainted by Lyssa's crazy memories. "I guess that's why she called Issy her nemesis. She probably really thought she was her enemy."

Dad looked abashed, "Well, no, that's not why she would call you 'Nemesis'. Sweetheart, that's your name. You are the goddess Nemesis, or you were once upon a time. We always called you Issy for short, and eventually you started going by Isabel, or Isabella around humans."

I swallowed around the lump forming in my throat. "That doesn't sound very nice; what kind of goddess was I?"

He chuckled. "The word had a bit of a different connotation then. You were responsible for righting wrongs, for assisting in bringing people to justice. Kind of like a cop, but for the whole world." He smiled when he referenced his chosen profession. I wasn't quite sold on it, though.

"So were you some kind of cop-god too?" For some reason I felt like I would accept it better if I knew Dad had been alongside me.

"Oh, no. I was responsible for ferrying the dead to their judgment. I was rarely ever out in the trenches, per se." I gnawed on my lip as I thought about it, wondering if I wiki'd Nemesis if I would feel better or worse.

Dad shifted in his seat, uncomfortable at my silent staring, and then he stood and nodded to the phone. "While we're still waiting for the paint to dry, I'll give Thane a call and fill him in on Lyssa's memories."

I hopped up with him. "Wait!" I had been needing to call Thane for a while, wanting to ask him a couple of things that I didn't feel comfortable asking my dad, and though I didn't really feel comfortable asking Thane either, at least he wasn't sleeping in the same house and I wouldn't have to face him every day afterwards. "I'll call him, that way if he has any questions you don't have to field them."

He looked at me suspiciously, and I smiled. "Bells, you didn't happen to see or hear anything about Thane in your vision, did you?"

I frowned, wondering why it mattered. Thane's name had never come up in conversation except the one time we had called him together. "Noooo, not that I know of." I quirked an eyebrow at him. "Why, is there something I should know?"

Dad turned away from me, turning on the television as he flopped back onto the couch. "Nope," he muttered. "His number's by the handset with the emergency list."

I took the portable upstairs for some privacy and saw my dad glance at me with concern as I scaled the staircase. I dialed the long number and waited impatiently for the international transfer before a man answered in a clipped accent. "Hello? Charles?"

"Hello, this is Bella," I responded before he had the opportunity to call me "Issy" again.

He sounded too pleased when he replied, "Bella! Hello, I've been hoping you would call soon."

He was probably just being polite, but I was pretty certain he would regret my call by the time I was done. I told him about my vision, that it was from Lyssa's memory, and he asked me to tell him exactly what I saw with details. When I finished, he told me that he felt that having Lyssa's memories was keeping me from seeing all of Issy's, but hopefully they would break through little by little. He was more concerned than Dad had been that Issy had told Lyssa to call her Nemesis. I told him about Dad's theory that my memories were tainted by Lyssa's craziness, and he agreed that it was possible, but asked me to call him again if I saw any more of her visions.

"Thank you for calling, Bella. This information could be very useful in helping you regain Issy's memories."

I squirmed on the bed, nervous to continue, knowing I might be giving away too much information, but wanting to know the truth. "Ummm, I actually have a couple more things I need to ask you."

He was quiet, and I thought he might be holding his breath. "Of course, whatever you need."

"I was talking to the Alpha of the local werewolf pack…" The words sounded too weird when I said them out loud, and he interrupted me.

"Werewolves? Do you mean the shape-shifters? The Quileute?"

At least he knew that much. "Yes! Exactly. Well, I was talking to Jacob, the Alpha, and he told me about something that happens to them. They call it imprinting, and basically they find their soul-mates or whatever and instantly they are pretty much bound to them. Everything in the world becomes about that one person. Do we have something like that?" I knew I had over-simplified and rushed my explanation, but I just needed him to confirm or deny that what I felt for Edward was even possible.

He was quiet again, and I wondered if we had been disconnected. "Bound? Yes, we become bound to each other, but I would not say it was anything instantaneous. We live for thousands of years, and during that time our affection for each other grows to the point where we make a life together and the other person's concerns become our own, like any healthy, adult relationship." His voice became low and quiet, and if I didn't have super-sensitive hearing, I might not have caught his next words. "Why, did this Jacob claim to have felt this for you?"

I was shocked by the hint of danger in his voice, and quickly denied his thoughts. "No! In fact, it was the opposite. He was assuring me that his intentions were merely friendly because he knew he hadn't imprinted on me."

His voice sounded a thousand times lighter, and somewhat embarrassed. "Oh, well, excellent then. I suppose that is convenient."

I looked at the phone quizzically, though he couldn't see me, wondering what was so convenient about it. I also wondered how much he really knew about the whole thing. Just because he hadn't experienced it, didn't mean it wasn't possible. Jake's friends' memories seemed pretty definite to me.

"Is there anything else I can help you with, Bella?" I almost told him no, thanked him for his time and hung up, but I knew I had to ask my next question eventually, and now was probably the best time to do it.

"Thane, I'm sorry to have to ask you this, but I definitely can't ask my dad. You see, I haven't had my period since I came to Forks, and I know I can't be pregnant, unless of course Immaculate Conception is one of my newfound powers…" I said it as a joke, but until that moment I hadn't really considered it. I quickly looked down at my waist, wondering if I had put on any weight.

He chuckled on the other end. "No, you do not need to add Immaculate Conception to your worries. Your body has stopped changing for now, as long as you shape-shift on a regular basis. Until you choose to stop shifting you will not go through your cycle again. Despite that, you could get pregnant, the normal, non-divine way that is, if you so choose."

"But only with a human, right? Is that what Dad said?"

"Perhaps. We believed for a while we had regained our ability to create children together, but that was before…" he trailed off, and I felt bad for him, wondering if he had lost someone near him and was as angry at Lyssa as Dad seemed to be.

"Well, thanks. That really puts my mind at ease."

"My pleasure. Call me if you remember anything else," he said with all sincerity. I realized that my missing memories might mean even more to other people, those who were still trying to find family they had lost, than they meant to me. We said goodbye and I hung up, and then went downstairs to finish painting the kitchen with Dad.

We went a little slower, but it still only took us about an hour to finish. Luckily, I had managed not to get any paint on me thanks to my precision. Dad was capping the paint buckets when he asked, "So, are you ready to go out and eat, or do you need to change first?"

I laughed, just imagining the look on the neighbors' faces if we just walked out and started eating mice on the sidewalk in our human forms. "Dad, it's barely four. It won't be dark enough to go out for another couple of hours."

His eyes crinkled up as he tried not to laugh at me. "No, Bella. Out to eat at The Royal, the diner we used to go to when you were little."

My mouth dropped open in horror. Why would he want to waste money on food that tasted worse than dirt to us? "What? Why?"

He sighed, looking at me with paternal disapproval at my disgust, like I was a toddler throwing her vegetables on the floor. "I used to go every Thursday, but we haven't gone since you moved here and you hardly ever go grocery shopping. If we don't at least make some effort to pretend to eat normally, people will be suspicious."

I felt guilty because he didn't know that the people he was trying to hide our true nature from already knew due to my inability to keep secrets from one delicious boy, and I certainly wasn't about to confess that to my dad. I agreed to go and we headed to the diner.

We walked into The Royal and Patty, the waitress who had always served us on my yearly visits, immediately came up to us, smacking Dad on the arm and chastising him for not bringing me in sooner. She reached out one French-manicured hand and lightly gave me a one-armed hug. I felt affection and nostalgia coming from her, and I couldn't help reciprocating the emotions.

She led us to a table in the corner where Dad could put his back to the wall and watch the door and windows. He'd told me once it was just his nosiness, wanting to be the first to see who came through the door, but I now wondered if he wasn't preparing for an ambush, scarred by the memories I could only remember in snippets.

Patty didn't bother to give us menus, certain she knew what we would order. "So, Chief, that'll be the 10 oz sirloin, rare, potato fully trimmed, and a steamin' mug of black tar. And Miss Bella? Will it still be a veggie plate with ranch and an ice water with extra lemon?"

I smiled at her memory but shook my head. "Ummm, I think I'll just have the same as Dad tonight, Patty."

She raised an eyebrow and placed a hand on one slender, apron-covered hip. "Don't tell me you let your dad's bad eating habits rub off on you, now."

I shot a glance at Dad before responding. "Well, you know, like father, like daughter."

She sighed. "I've been trying to convince him for years that if he keeps eating like that he'll wind up in an early grave. I thought I could count on you to help me coerce him into eating healthy, Bella!"

With a chuckle, Dad smiled at her and winked. "Ah, Patty. Come on now, you only live once!"

She shook her head and smiled at his puckish behavior, but once she turned away I kicked him under the table for his bad joke. He rubbed his shin, chuckling, and I couldn't help laughing in return.

Once we were done shoveling down the tasteless slop, we headed home and Dad changed clothes and went to work. I tried to watch television but before long I was having trouble keeping my eyes open since I had only gotten a couple hours of sleep in the morning. I showered and took the time to dry my hair, just in case I had another unexpected break-through that distracted me again from drying it later. I padded into my bedroom in my pajamas and fell asleep quickly.

I woke suddenly and checked my alarm clock to find that only a few hours had passed since I lied down and I wondered if I had been woken by Dad getting home, but then I heard a sound at my window. I looked over and at first I thought I was seeing another vision, but then I realized that there was actually someone outside of my window. I was too dumbfounded to have a proper sense of concern that someone was hanging out by my second story room, so I went to the window in curiosity, peering closely through.

I realized there were long, pale fingers pressed against the bottom of the window, as if they were trying to push it open. I could just make out the outline of a head bent close to the fingers, as if examining my window, and trying not to get my hopes up, I bent down too. _Edward._ My heart gave a stupid little flutter, not wanting to stay in me if he was so near.

I reached out my fingers and pressed them against my side of the window, matching his, and the window felt colder than normal where his fingers rested. He looked up and met my gaze, and I hoped the smile on my face wasn't too dopey. He bashfully smiled back, and then glanced back down at the window curiously. I kept our fingers matching but used my thumbs to flip back the locks and we slid the window open together.

Our hands stayed on the bottom of the window casing, holding it up above our heads, separated by less than an inch of vinyl. Our arms and elbows, though, pressed to each other's as we raised it, because once they accidentally touched, I couldn't stand to move my arms away from his. Our faces were mere inches apart, but neither of us moved to bring us closer. We merely looked at each other, though I for one had every detail of his face memorized, from the curve of his bottom lip, to the bump at the top of his nose, to the one eyebrow hair that seemed to have a mind of its own as it leaned in the wrong direction.

I glanced down to see how he was standing on the side of my house, or if he was somehow floating, but he was balanced on the edge of his knees on my sliver of a window ledge.

"So," he began, and I looked back up to his shimmering topaz eyes. "Why do you have locks on a second story window?" He didn't have a hint of sarcasm on his face, and I actually giggled, but tried to smoothly change it to a sultry laugh without success.

"My dad had this crazy notion that some overzealous vampire might decide to scale the side of the house in the middle of the night and sneak into my bedroom while I slept. I told him he was being paranoid. Pretty silly of him, huh?"

He leaned a little closer, smirking, naturally. "I hope you didn't place a bet on that."

I leaned even closer until I could whisper in his ear, "Nah, but only because I secretly hoped he was right."

He turned his face to meet my eyes, and then looked at my lips, a scant hairs-breadth from his own. He shakily inhaled then moved his face a little further away before he met my gaze again. "Are you going to invite me in?"

"Oh, so that's true? You have to be invited into a home before you can enter it?"

He laughed whole-heartedly, his arms shaking against mine. "No, but I thought it would be rude to push you out of the way so I could hop into your room."

I chuckled in return. "Well, thank you for being polite, but you can't come in."

He stopped laughing and quickly masked the hurt that flashed across his face. I wanted to reach out a finger to smooth the wrinkle on his brow that appeared every time he tried to pretend to have no emotion, but I didn't want to startle him. "My dad should be home any minute now, and he'd be able to smell you in my room. I'd be grounded for the rest of my life, however long that may be."

He seemed to understand and was about to speak when we heard the cruiser turn onto the street. We both turned our heads in the direction of the sound and then turned back to each other regretfully. "Speak of the devil," he whispered.

"Something like that," I responded. He watched my face for a second, his eyes darting all over, and then he leaned towards me and placed his cold, smooth lips just below my ear. My eyes fluttered closed and I shivered when I felt a wind stir up as he dropped to the ground. His landing was almost silent, and I kept my eyes shut as he raced into the night. Once the pull indicated he was out of range of my sight, I shut the window and crawled back into bed. I was asleep before Dad even turned off his car.

I opened my eyes Monday morning just before the alarm clock could sound. I turned it off, preempting its screech, and looked to the window, wondering if I had only dreamed of Edward during the night. The sight that greeted me was pretty much the opposite in my book to the view that had greeted me just a few hours before. The sun loomed large over the treetops, nary a cloud in the sky. I grunted and threw a pillow at my window as if I thought I could scare it away like a yowling cat. Needless to say, its obnoxiously cheerful yellowness stayed put.

I dressed, pulling on my hoodie and perching my sunglasses on my nose again before making my way to school. When I pulled up to the parking lot I noticed there were about a dozen girls lying out on the grass with the arms of their t-shirts and their pant legs rolled up, trying to catch rays for the brief amount of time the sun would be out. Did they really think anyone in Western Washington State cared one wit whether or not they had a tan? I snorted, thinking how disappointed they would be when they realized they had just given themselves farmers' tans instead of sexy bikini tans.

I schlepped over to the overhang of the English building so I wouldn't glow and I could be close to my first class. I took out my sketch pad, debating whether I should draw Edward's hands or his eyes, when I flipped to the page where I had drawn Issy. I touched her eyes and mouth on the paper, remembering when I first saw her in the snow, and how my memory didn't hold a hint of dislike or mistrust for her at the time. Yet, there she was on the paper before me, her lips thin and gloating, her eyes closed off and jaded.

A shadow stretched across my sketch and I looked up, shading my eyes, hoping Edward was making an appearance. I could feel him nearby, but his Volvo wasn't in the lot. Unfortunately, Mike was standing over me, his big, puppy dog smile spread across his unwelcome face. "Hey, Bella, why aren't you out in the sun with everyone else?"

I was becoming a master at lying at the blink of an eye. "Didn't I tell you on Saturday? I'm extra sensitive to the sun. In just a few minutes I would be badly sunburned, blisters and everything. It's a hereditary condition."

He grimaced and sank to the ground next to me. "That's too bad. Guess it's good you live in Forks then. Phoenix must have sucked for you."

_Tell me about it._ "Yeah, it totally did."

He inhaled sharply and then quickly spoke. "Do you want to go out for dinner some time this week? My treat, but you know, just a friend thing if you want."

_Damn it! I should have touched him and found out what he wanted as soon as he walked up so I could have prevented this. _"Mike, I thought we already talked about all that."

He looked confused, so I reiterated my comments from the previous week. "Mike, Jessica digs you. You should be asking her out, as more than a friend."

He flushed and looked down at the ground where he had pulled out a small pile of grass in his nervousness. "Guess that's a no."

I patted his hand. "Jess is my friend too, and even if we just hung out as friends, she would still be hurt."

He nodded and smiled slightly. "Well, sorry for wasting your time. Guess I'll go look for Jess."

I smiled in return. "Yes, you do that."

He wondered off and I concentrated on Edward, just trying to figure out where he was at the moment. The pull seemed to be coming from the direction of the trees near the school, and when I looked at them I saw some branches rustle and a pair of expensive shoes disappearing into the forest. I wondered if he was catching some breakfast before class, and then the first bell rang. I gathered my books and bag while keeping an eye on the trees for Edward's return, but he didn't come back out before I had to leave for class. After all, I couldn't afford to be tardy again.

Jessica met up with me after Government and spent the next three hours telling me what kind of options she was thinking about for a dress for the upcoming dance. She and Angela and Cow were going shopping in Port Angeles that night and she begged me to go with them to give my opinion. Though she pinched my hoodie and told me with a sneer that lately she was beginning to doubt my fashion sense.

I declined, already feeling a little nauseous, even if it was just mental, at the thought of the kind of skanktastic excuse for a dress Lauren would try on. I claimed that I would need to help my dad finish fixing up the kitchen, because Jess didn't need to know that it would only take me a few minutes to put the door handles and drawer pulls back on.

At the beginning of the lunch hour, I stared at the Cullens' table waiting for them to show up, until Jessica noticed and interrupted her dress discourse to inform me that the Cullens never came to school on the few days a year when it was sunny because their parents took them hiking on those days. I hadn't formally met Dr. Cullen yet, but I wondered if Edward could talk him into anonymously sending Dad a letter regarding the cruelty of sending his glowing and overheated teenager to school in too much clothing because the sun was out, when he could just as easily send her "hiking."

On the way to Biology, Mike mentioned that the weatherman had announced that it would be sunny until Tuesday afternoon. I glared into space, knowing this would mean that I wouldn't see Edward until Wednesday, and I couldn't stop the soft growl that escaped my throat.

Mike quit speaking mid-sentence and looked away from me with an audible gulp. I felt a twinge of self-reproach and assured him I was just upset at the weather prospects because of my fake skin condition. He seemed appeased by this, but he was still quiet for the rest of the walk to class.

After school, Dad and I finished putting the kitchen back together and then I was completing my homework when the phone rang. Jessica excitedly told me that she was going out to eat with Mike, so the dress shopping trip was postponed until Tuesday evening. She told me that Lauren had backed out so I "absolutely must go" to give her my opinion. I looked at Dad, who was pretending to rub his ears in pain at her high-pitched squeals. Although I didn't relish the idea of watching Jess and Angela try on a ton of dresses, I thought it might be nice to get out of the house for a little while and maybe do a little shopping of my own. I mouthed "Can I go?", and he chuckled and nodded.

We made plans for her to pick me up after school the next day and she hung up. I finished my homework while Dad was in his room changing clothes. He would be working twelve-hour night shifts for a while until his new hires started, since most of Forks' law breakers were drunks causing fights or driving erratically on the rain-wet roads after work. He made me promise to call him if I had any more unpleasant visions and couldn't sleep.

Once he left, I was at a loss of what to do with myself. I had no more homework to distract me, no new books, and it would be pointless to reread the old ones with my pristine memory. I made a mental note to look for a giant puzzle or a craft kit of some kind when I was shopping, because with all of my free time of late, I should really be accomplishing something.

Since the sun was still shining, I couldn't even go for a walk down the street without looking like a one girl day-glo parade. I looked down at my hand, wondering what I actually looked like now in the full sun.

Our backyard was fenced on two sides, but open to the woods in the back. Surely, if I were to go out I would hear someone approaching the fence or through the woods before they could actually see me all lit up. I walked into the bathroom and grabbed Dad's shaving mirror. One side was flat and showed a regular reflection. On the flipside, the mirror was slightly concave, magnifying the image, because apparently Dad's superior vision alone wasn't enough to perfect his facial hair grooming technique.

I grabbed a quilt from the downstairs closet on my way out so I could comfortably sit on the still somewhat damp grass. I opened the back door and took a look around, confirming that no one could see me before I spread the quilt out in the middle of the yard. I settled on the ground before I lifted the mirror to look at myself.

In the full sun, I was definitely noticeably glowing, like the moon was trapped beneath my skin. Rainbows shifted across the surface, like the iridescence of a pearl. For some reason I had pictured myself glowing green like a cartoon Martian. I was pleasantly surprised with my more subtle luminescence.

Even my eyes seemed to glow, my irises becoming chocolate colored diamonds in the sun. As I stared into my eyes in the reflection, their glow seemed to dim. Instead of the soft, melting brown they usually appeared to be, though, they seemed hard and damp, like rocks on the bottom of a river, like Issy's eyes.

I gasped and opened my hand to drop the mirror, but Dad's shaving mirror was no longer in my hand. Instead, I was staring into a large, ornate vanity mirror, dimly lit by gas lamps on either side. I tried to be calm and sit still as the small, dark girl behind me brushed out my waist length hair. She didn't like me, she didn't trust me, and she was hardly trying to be gentle with her strokes.

"Perhaps you should go attend on Senorita Lyssa, Maria, if you do not care to be gentle with my scalp," I harshly muttered.

She jumped a little at my angry voice, and dropped her wide-eyed gaze to the ground. "Yes, Senorita Isabella. Is there anything else I can do for you tonight?"

I sighed in frustration that she could not even pretend to do her job without prejudice. I flittered my fingers indicating she should leave, and she curtsied and then scurried out with relief. The servant girl was employed by our hosts and had come with them to Spain from her home in Mexico. I could not dismiss her, but hopefully I could scare her into staying away from me.

All of the servants here were wary of me, to some extent or another. They saw me as a wicked, sinful young woman, cuckolding my husband, "Senor the Baron," without a hint of shame or remorse. At first, the men of the villa and the town below would leer at me, as if my having a lover gave them the right to stare at me so. I gave them my most spiteful glare as I siphoned off their excess lust-fueled emotions, and drained, they would turn their eyes away from me, knowing in their superstitious minds that there was more to the lovely girl before them than met the eyes.

The women, on the other hand, clucked their tongues as I passed, rubbing their rosary beads, praying for the boy whose life they thought I was sucking dry; the irony being that for once, I had nothing to do with his wasting state. Sometimes the crones even spit in my wake, pitying my poor, unknowing husband.

They had never even met my Lord, did not know he was quite capable of handling any problem in his path, even a wayward wife. My only hope now was that I could manage to keep Lyssa in the dark about my plans long enough for me to act on them before she could contact my Lord or Charles. I had only managed to hie off to Spain with only Lyssa for company by concocting a diplomatic emergency to keep the men distracted.

My sister seemed to not suspect anything at first, but as soon as she saw Anthony three months ago, strumming his guitar from his balcony in town, surrounded by hibiscus whose orangey petals paled in comparison to the gleaming copper of his disarrayed tresses, his pale skin lit only by the stars and the moonlight, she knew I was up to something. I could tell she had a vision by the momentary glazed look in her eyes, though she avoided my telepathic touch as she turned to me with a sneer before walking away.

I still did not know what she saw, but she had yet to send for my husband, so I assumed her inability to see my future had interfered with her vision of Anthony's fate. I looked more closely at myself in the mirror. Lyssa didn't need to be able to see my future to know what was in store for me in just a few short months. My stomach was still mostly flat, but my breasts were growing full and heavy, preparing to sustain the life now forming inside me.

It had been thousands of years since I last gave birth, but I still remembered how my body reacted at different stages of my gestation. My calculations indicated that I became pregnant the first time we had sex, when I took his virginity. I knew it was possible at the time, but somehow I did not think it was probable and had not even tried to prepare.

Before I could think of caring for the child I would soon be blessed with, I first had to save its father. I could hear the dulcet tones of a guitar on the other side of the door separating my dressing room from my boudoir as I pressed my hand against it, ready to push through. I paused, composing my thoughts and wiping away the concerned frown I knew I wore so my boy would only see the loving, seductive smile I always had for him.

Once my mask was in place I opened the door and walked into the bedroom, but he wasn't facing me. I should have known he would not look in this direction since my full-length mirror was next to the door. He had stopped looking in mirrors weeks ago, still too afraid to face the truth of his condition. He was sitting on the edge of the bed now, bent over the guitar as he strummed and plucked with an almost inhuman fervor. His hair hung lank and wet from his bath, and the bones of his spine were clearly delineated beneath his skin, each one ringed by purple, blotchy bruises, the only color darkening his gray-white skin.

Just a few short months ago, he had been a seventeen year old doppelganger of his grandfather, the Commodore I had briefly known so many years ago, the war hero who had died just before he was born. He had stood straight and broad shouldered, a proud, joyful youth, with only the subtle paleness of his skin, the dark circles under his mossy eyes, and the slight taint of blood on his lips to indicate the Consumption eating away at him from the inside. He had been traveling across the continent, seeking out healing waters and a miracle in each country. Then, he found me, and he stopped traveling, convinced my presence alone would restore his vigor.

Now, he was but a thin, faint ghost of himself. Upon hearing my entrance, he began singing a doleful, melancholy Spanish tune, full of lost love and hopelessness. I wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him, shout that there was still a chance, that he would just have to sacrifice his life to spend eternity with me.

Instead, I walked around the bed and sank to my knees in front of him on the plush rug, resting my head against his bare thigh as I watched him play. His jewel-toned eyes were feverishly bright and red rimmed, and I knew his time was nigh.

I lifted a hand, feeling the ever present spark between us as I touched his knee, and then trailed my fingertips up his sparsely hair-covered leg, leaving a line of gooseflesh behind. It disappeared out of sight behind his guitar, where his own instrument was already excited by my touch. He gasped and his eyes fluttered closed as he stopped strumming with a jarring discord. He reached his hand behind the guitar and grabbed mine. At first he pressed it more firmly against him while I stroked. He groaned, but then his jaw tensed, and he pushed my hand away as he stood.

I repressed a sigh and watched as he walked across the room to place his guitar on its stand, his long, nude form still a sight to behold despite it's recently attained gauntness. Every inch of him was lean and tight, and I itched to touch him again. It had been a week since the last time we had made love, and he had stopped in a coughing fit then. He claimed exhaustion each time I approached him afterwards, but I wondered if it was not partly embarrassment that kept him from reciprocating my caresses.

"Love," he whispered in his smooth, upper-crust British accent while he fiddled with his guitar. "I am sorry, but not tonight, I am too…"

I interrupted, "Yes, yes, you are too tired tonight. You are too tired every night."

His shoulders tensed and I knew I sounded like a shrew, but what I had planned would be so much easier if he let me pleasure him first. He turned back to me, his head down and fists clenched, and he walked to stand in front of me at the bed where I still knelt, one hand reaching out to touch my head, lifting a strand of my hair and rubbing it between his fingers before he dropped it to cup my cheek. I closed my eyes as I nuzzled his palm.

"Bella," he sighed his nickname for me as I slowly, delicately licked his wrist, savoring his sweet taste with a soft moan. Though internally I shuddered, secretly knowing that he tasted so succulent to me because he was rotting away before me, and I would always relish the flavor of death.

He sighed, capitulating, and sank to his knees too. I opened my eyes, surprised and thrilled, and smiled my delight at him. He wryly smirked as he wrapped his long arms around my waist, pulling me to him as much as his waning strength allowed. My lips met his and we both groaned into each other as we melted together.

My hands inched up his bare back as he moved us sideways, gently laying me back on the rug. His hands were cold through the thin cotton of my nightgown as they drifted up my stomach to cradle my swollen breasts. He pulled away slightly and bit his bottom lip as he stared at me with a hooded gaze. "Blessed heavens! They seem to grow bigger every time I touch them!"

I chuckled but hoped he did not press the issue, not wanting to have a pregnancy discussion at the moment. I moved my own hands down to distract him, firmly grabbing his rear and lifting my hips as I pressed him against me. He was firm and more than ready for me, and he twitched when he felt my moist heat through my gown. His eyes closed again and he crashed his lips against mine, sliding his tongue in between them to caress my own. The blood on his breath was stronger than ever and I was disgusted with myself as I licked inside his mouth, trying to taste as much of it as I could.

I moved my hands down, wanting to pull off my gown, but he grabbed them just after I exposed my hips. "Leave it," he whispered, lifting my fingers to his lips briefly before wrapping both of my wrists in one of his large hands. With his other hand he cupped a breast, raising one cloth covered peak to his cold, moist lips. His tongue rolled around it before he softly applied his teeth. I sighed in exultation, lifting my hips to his again, wrapping one calf over his leg. He pressed himself against me in turn, but quickly moved both his hips and lips away with a chuckle.

I whimpered at his loss, but he just grinned as he stuck two of his own fingers in his mouth. He then lowered his palm to my _mons_, sliding his long, wet musician's fingers into me, playing me expertly. His palm moved against me as his fingers strummed inside me, and I had a second to think that I had trained him well, before I moaned for him as his lips found my other breast.

He created a symphony upon my flesh with his hands and his mouth, but I was struggling not to cry as his thoughts flowed into me. He was trying so hard to make me happy, to give me fulfillment now, because he was certain he would leave me empty and devastated soon. I tried to relinquish his bittersweet ideas, to just enjoy myself, knowing that he would be whole and perfect again soon, but I could not stop some lingering doubts.

He had my full attention again when the familiar tension began to trickle down my spine, gathering and crashing through me as he brought me to a crescendo_. _I pressed my lips to his forehead to muffle the wordless cries uncontrollably escaping my mouth as he plucked the final strains of his masterpiece from me.

He lifted his luscious mouth to mine, removing his hand from me to guide his staff into me, and his tongue mimicked his unyielding length as I stretched to accommodate him. We merged, two disparate harmonies becoming one complex melody as we found the rhythm to bring us to a joint finale. He began to answer my soft cries with groans, and he released my wrists to sweep his arm under my back, carefully pulling me to him, slowly folding us into a sitting position so I could conduct our tempo.

I met his eyes as I sank down on him, his gaze so open and trusting. I wanted to sink through him, to be under his skin and bolster his fading strength with my own. Instead, as he closed his eyes and sighed, and as he pulsed his warm flow into me, I clamped down onto him, both internally and with my teeth at his neck. I allowed the control I had built over several millennia slip, and my canines and bicuspids sank into his jugular, allowing his other warm liquid to pulse into me as well. He weakly struggled against me, but I held tight to him, every limb insinuated around his, and eventually he stopped fighting.

It was strange and uncomfortable to me to drink the blood of a living being; though I supposed since it was the sentence I was passing on him, I could suffer through it this once. The blood tasted ambrosial to me, but it flowed too quickly into my mouth, almost choking me. My instinct was to drain his energy or bite off and swallow his flesh to kill him quickly, but I reminded myself that I was not trying to kill him, but rather I was merely trying to spread whatever contagion I carried to change him into a vampire, as Lyssa had done to her pet so many years before.

The blood was slowing, and I was not sure what I needed to do next. I moved away from his neck, realizing I had made quite a mess and his blood was running down between us. I looked back up, trying to find his eyes, hoping I could judge if the change was starting to take place.

His head lolled back on his neck, his jaw slack, and his eyes were closed. I lifted a hand to brush his tousled hair away from his eyes, but when I moved my arm, he started to slump to the side. I grasped his arms with both of my hands and shook him, trying to make him come to, but as I did, I realized that I could no longer feel the ever-present electricity between us. I stilled, looking and listening carefully. His heart was no longer beating, which seemed to correspond with what I had heard about vampires, as did his unnatural paleness, though he was almost as pale before. However, what I could not reconcile, what I did not know about vampires was whether or not I would be able to feel their souls, their life energy, because at the moment Anthony's was completely gone from me.

I tried not to panic as I shook him again, first gently, then violently, his head flopping back and forth on his shoulders with each of my jerks. "Anthony," I whispered sweetly, though my voice shook, trying to coerce him into looking back at me. "My love, I am sorry, but it had to be done so we can be together. Please Anthony, please just look at me."

His head remained lax against his shoulder, his eyes stayed closed, and his jaw hung open still, but now at an odd angle since his chin rested on his clavicle. My resolve to remain calm snapped, and my eyes slammed shut to the horror before me as I screamed his name loud enough to wake the undead.

The sound echoed around me, and I heard birds fleeing their nests in fear at my roar. I felt the heat of the sun beating down on me, and I blinked my eyes open to see that I was once again safe in my backyard. With relief, I felt Edward's pull just a few yards in front of me. I opened my eyes and saw golden eyes staring back at me with shock and what appeared to be jealousy.

I quickly stood, planning to use all of my inhuman speed to reach him, to hold him and make sure he was real, but before I could reach him, he was gone. Without thought, I changed direction and followed after him. Unfortunately for me, he had a head start and was faster than me, so the gap between us increased the further we travelled.

"Edward!" I called after him. "Wait, please!" I didn't know why he was running from me, especially since he had said he wouldn't, but I wanted to ask him if he knew whether or not I had made him into a vampire, and I needed to wrap my arms around him and feel that he wasn't just a figment of my imagination.

Ahead of me, I could tell he had reached his home and I ground to a halt, falling to my knees in the damp leaves of the forest, wishing I had the guts to stride into the home of the vampire coven and demand answers and grab hold of the boy who was ingrained in every part of my mind and memories.

I slammed my fists into the leaves in front of me, shaking with hiccupping sobs, and feeling the ineffectual tears streaming down my face as a physical manifestation of my frustration for no one to witness in the empty woods. I pulled myself off the ground, still crying, and lurched my way back home.

* * *

**E/N: I'm working up a short and sweet EPOV of this chap. and will probably post it as a "new" story some time this week on fanfiction(dot)net, so check my profile later this week, or put me on author alert if you want to read it.**

**And REVIEW PLEASE! It makes me oh so happy to read reviews, even if they just say "cool" or "nice." I read every one, and might even respond! Seriously, I love it, brings a little light to my foggy, dreary day.**

**Come play on the twilighted thread! (Direct link on my profile.) **(http(colon)(slash)(slash)www(dot)twilighted(dot)net(slash)forum(slash)viewtopic(dot)php?f=33&t=3943)


	10. Chapter 10 Best Served Cold

**A/N: The Cygnet and the Strigoi has made it to the final round of voting for the Indie Twific Awards. Voting opens July 22 and goes through July 26. You do not need to have nominated initially to vote now, and these are the small-time fics that NEED YOUR VOTES! The Cygnet and the Strigoi is up for Best Alternate Universe WIP, so, if you like it, go vote!**

**http(colon)(slash)(slash)(slash)vote(dot)aspx **

**Thanks to furious kitten and ShowTunesJesus, betas extraordinaire. You had me at hello, you complete me. And for all the lovely reviewers and thread playas, and favorite-ers and alert-ers… jump into my nightmare, the water is warm. ;-) **

Disclaimer: **All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. In other words, I do not own Twilight.**

* * *

Ch. 10: Best Served Cold

As I left the woods and entered my backyard, I felt chilled despite the sun beating down from above, making my skin glow. I was too distracted to even take notice of it, however, as I picked up Dad's mirror and the quilt from the grass.

Why had Edward run away from me? Had I said or done something to make him angry at me? Perhaps he just had plans and had to leave at that moment. Yeah, right. Judging by the look on his face when I opened my eyes and saw him, and the fact that he didn't even turn around when I called his name, I could pretty much rule out that his running away was nothing personal.

Once inside, I put away the mirror and the quilt and sat in the living room, wishing I wasn't alone, or at the very least had someone I could call about my problems. I doubted Jessica would want to listen to me complain about maybe turning Edward Cullen into a vampire in a past life.

I thought about calling Dad, but I thought it wouldn't be an appropriate conversation to have on the telephone while he was at work. I could just imagine calling the police station and telling Dad I might have killed someone. I'm sure it would go over oh-so-well. Also, I wasn't at all sure I should tell Dad about my vision. If he didn't know about Anthony, surely Issy had a reason not to tell him. If he did know, then he was purposefully keeping information from me, which just irritated the heck out of me.

Thane entered my mind as a possibility for a moment, but ever since he dismissed the idea that we could imprint like the Quileute did, I was doubtful that he was as much of an expert on our history as Dad seemed to think he was. Besides, I pictured him as being a stuffy, pretentious, tweed-wearing librarian, and I seriously doubted he could tell me what I really wanted to know, which was whether or not what I felt for Edward and what I believed he felt for me was just because of our past connection, whatever it was.

I only knew one person who could spend hours dissecting a man's every word and wouldn't be completely freaked out if I happened to mention any supernatural mumbo jumbo. Renee answered on the fourth ring and screeched my name in greeting. I laughed a little at her excitement, though I felt guilty for not calling her more often.

She immediately launched into a story about one of the other player's wives who was also travelling with Phil's team. She was left in the bathroom at a gas station, and an hour later, after someone realized she was missing and the bus turned around to fetch her, she was still in the bathroom and had no idea that she was left behind.

I laughed along with Renee, who always laughed at her own jokes, and relaxed as she began telling another story. She talked for an hour before she remembered that I had called her, and she finally asked if I had anything I wanted to talk about.

There didn't seem to be a point in talking to her about past lives and vampires, so I tried to focus on the normal, human aspects of the problem. I inhaled and then carefully phrased my question. "How do you know if a guy really likes you for you, and not for, you know, other stuff?"

"Your dad told me you're even prettier now than ever. Are you worried that some boy likes you because of your…" She hesitated before continuing. "Changes?"

I sighed, not knowing how else to explain it without her feeling the need to call Dad about it. "Yeah, something like that."

She sounded thoughtful when she responded. "Well, I'm sorry honey, but I really don't know what to tell you. I've always had a knack for knowing when someone is being honest with me and what their true intentions are, though not as good as your dad, of course. I thought he said you were getting better with all that…" Her voice became a whisper. "Mind reading."

"I'm still learning," I replied but she had given me an idea. If I could get Edward to give me a moment of his time, maybe I could ask some not too obvious questions while touching him and I could at least know his reactions.

"Well, sweetie, you're such a clever girl. Any boy with half a brain would like you for your wit and personality, and if this boy doesn't, than he's an idiot, and you wouldn't want an idiot to like you anyway, would you?" She barely breathed through her spiel of twisted logic, and I smiled at the phone. I could always count on Renee to be her same, eccentric self.

"I suppose you're right," I answered, still smiling. She might not have directly helped me solve my problems, but she helped me feel better able to handle them. Renee's tendency to talk in circles always forced me to focus on what I really wanted and needed, and I had missed her cock-eyed observations more than I realized.

We said goodnight, and I promised to call more often with every intention of actually doing so. I went to bed having decided not to think about Edward, Anthony, Issy or the whole lot of them until I actually had a chance to let Edward explain what had happened in the woods. Jumping to conclusions would get me nowhere, as would dwelling on my visions. They weren't here now, and I needed to focus on myself, at least for a little while. As I faded into sleep, I couldn't help thinking that maybe I couldn't remember all of Issy's memories because I was meant to live my own life without her negative influence. After all, I told myself, she and Lyssa seemed to have screwed up their own lives as well as all of their loved ones' with their bitterness and intrigues, and I refused to make the same mistakes.

The sun was shining yet again when I woke up, but I shrugged off the creeping desire to complain and threw on my hoodie over my clothes before heading downstairs. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper and sipping coffee in his pajamas, his hair still damp from his shower. I couldn't believe he was still up after his twelve-hour shift; I would certainly have passed out as soon as I was home. I greeted him cheerfully as I grabbed my own mug and filled it up, and he commented that I looked well-rested.

"Yep. Had a long and dreamless sleep." I sipped at my coffee with a smile.

"Good, I just wanted to make sure you were okay before I turned in."

He smiled sleepily at me, and I nodded and wished him a good rest. I told myself I was making the right decision by keeping my vision of Anthony to myself as I watched Dad slump off to bed. I just wanted to spend the day with my friends, to have fun and shop like a normal teenager, and I couldn't do that if my dad was worried about me, or worse, hauling me away from Edward in a panicked attempt to keep me from further exploring our connection.

Jessica spent the whole morning talking about her date with Mike, and I tried to contribute to the conversation. Really, I just agreed with her assessments in one syllable words, because that's all she would let me get out before she bounced to another observation. She sat by Mike at lunch though, so I talked to Angela instead and actually had to draw out her thoughts on what kind of dress she wanted to look for. The exchange was pleasant and relaxing, and if I had been normal, it would have completely taken my mind off everything in this life and the last, but since I'm a freak, the back of my mind kept track of Edward's movements. He was near the school, probably in the forest, and I felt relieved that he hadn't driven to Alaska and into the willing arms of his gorgeous friend.

After school I barely had time to drop off my backpack before Jess pulled into my driveway. I crawled into the backseat with a smile for Angela, who wanted to know if the music was okay with me. I got the distinct impression I was the deciding vote for whether we listened to Jess' pop music or not, so without a word I handed my mp3 player to Ang and let her pick out something better. Jess grumbled at first but soon even she was bobbing her head to The Maine with us.

We pulled up to the department store in Port Angeles, and Jess hopped out of the car excitedly and turned to me as I shut my door behind her. She groaned and clasped her hands in supplication. "Please, Bella, pleeease ditch the hoodie."

I glanced up at the light smoky clouds that had filled up the sky since noon. The sun was well and truly hidden, though I could spot it brightening up one particular cloud bank. I shrugged at Jess with a smile and pulled off the hoodie while she excessively rejoiced. Ang chuckled from the other side of the car, and I stuck my tongue out at the two of them before I tossed the sweatshirt into the car.

I looked at the shoes and jewelry as the girls looked through the dresses, but not finding anything special and knowing I would have more options in Seattle on Saturday anyway, I sat on the bench in the open area of the dressing rooms to wait for them. Jess came out first in a blue sequined number that was slit almost up to her hip and plunged at the bodice to her waist. I raised a brow and shook my head. "Your mom would murder you, Mike, and probably me as an unwilling accomplice."

She huffed but went back into the small room. Angela then walked out in a white dress that looked like it was supposed to be floor-length, but hit at an odd place on her shins due to her height. It had puffy little sleeves and spangles of cheap-looking beads around the waist. I grimaced and shook my head and she went back to change with a giggle. I wasn't exactly a fashionista, but were these chicks serious? I hoped their other picks were better.

Jess' next choice was made of dark purple velvet and had long pointed sleeves that covered her hands, an empire waist, and was short enough that I wondered if it was meant to be a shirt. I started laughing as soon as she walked out, and as she stood in front of the mirror next to me, she turned around and nearly mooned herself. I almost fell off my bench I was laughing so hard. She hastily ran back into the dressing room, holding down the front and back of the "dress" as she went.

Ang came back out in a navy and white striped knee length dress that had a small yoke around the neck and a short sailor's tie. I tilted my head at her before stating, "It's cute, Ang, but it's not exactly semi-formal."

She sighed. "I know. I just thought it was nice, and it's on clearance."

"Can you get it and a dress for the dance?" It really looked good on her, and it would be suitable for school with some flats and a cardigan when it got a little warmer outside.

She continued to examine herself in the mirror. "Hmmm, maybe. It just depends how much the other dress is." She sighed again and went to change.

Jess came out a couple of minutes later, biting her lip, pleading with her eyes for me to like the dress she had on. It was satin, fitted on top to the waist where it flared slightly down to a diagonal at the hem. There were dark green crystals that sparkled just enough to light up her face. It was truly a beautiful dress. Unfortunately it was a deep, burnished gold, and against Jess' pale skin it made her look jaundiced. Her face fell as she watched my examination.

"Give it to me, and I'll go find you something like it in a better color." She attempted a small smile before she walked back into the room. Soon, she handed the dress on its hanger to me over the door. I was still looking at it, trying to decide what color would be best on Jess, when Angela's door opened.

She stood in a dress almost identical to the one in my hands except it was hot pink, had purple crystals on the side of the bodice as well as the waist, and had a straight hem. The hot pink did nothing for her olive complexion, and her lips were pursed as she looked down at herself. She looked up at me, and then at the gold satin in my hands, and her jaw dropped.

"Trade ya," I said with a smirk. She snatched the dress from my hands with a nod and hastily shut the door. Less than a minute later the pink dress came flying over the door, and as soon as I caught it I yelled, "Jess, catch!"

A second later I heard Jess squeal and both doors flung open. The girls looked at me expectantly, and at my wide grin they looked at each other before pulling me into a group hug. We giggled and jumped and generally acted like idiots, but it was okay because we were genuinely happy. My giddiness only increased when my brain realized that Edward was less than twenty miles from the department store and was zeroing in quickly.

The girls went back into their rooms to change, and I tried not to fidget as I waited. I had already told them that I was going to the boardwalk while they ate dinner, with the excuse that I would eat at home since I had to make something for my Dad's lunch anyway. I could just track down Edward while they ate instead of going to the boardwalk. However, Angela inadvertently ruined my plans as she changed.

"Hey guys?" She called out, her voice muffled as she pulled her dress over her head. "It's too early to eat dinner yet. Why don't we all go down to the boardwalk now, and then you can at least come have dessert with us and eat some breadsticks or something, Bella."

Jess enthused over the new plan, and I mumbled my assent, secretly wondering why I ever liked Angela, before grudgingly telling myself that she meant well.

They made their purchases and put their bags in Jess' car, and then we all walked to the boardwalk. The fishy scent from the shore hit me particularly hard since I hadn't physically eaten in several days, and I had only sucked a little energy here and there at school. My stomach grumbled loudly and Ang looked at me with concern.

"Are you sure you can't just bring your dad some leftover pasta from the restaurant?" she asked, while still looking at me askance.

"Ummm, no, he just started a low-carb diet." Yeah, all meat, all the time.

Jess looked at me in surprise. "Why would the Chief need to diet? My mom and the other ladies at the bank all say he's the second hottest man in town, only just beat by Dr. Cullen."

It was my turn to look shocked. "Gross, Jess! That's my dad you're talking about!"

She giggled, "Hey, just saying what I heard."

I rolled my eyes and focused on Edward's location to distract myself from thinking of Jess' mom swooning over my dad. He was a little over a mile away now but seemed to be stationary, not coming any closer. I reluctantly accepted that he must not have come to Port Angeles just to see me, but it didn't stop me from wanting to find him.

We had passed the area where he would be on our way to the store, and I wondered which of the small stores he would be in, when I had an idea. "Oh! I saw a bookstore on our way in that I wanted to check out before it closes. I'll meet you at the restaurant when I'm done browsing."

Before they could say a word, I turned around and started jogging in the direction of Edward and the stores. "Wait!" Angela yelled out.

I turned but continued jogging backwards as she spoke. "Why don't we come with you? Then we can all go to the restaurant."

Seriously, Ang? Just play along! "You can come along if you really want to look at books with me, but I want to get there with plenty of time to look around."

Jess grimaced at the mention of looking at books, and she grabbed Angela's arm and glared at her to keep her quiet before turning back to me with a smile. "That's alright. You go on ahead, Bella. We'll see you at the restaurant in a little while."

I nodded to her and then turned back in the direction I was headed with a grin. Even jogging at a human pace, it didn't take me long to reach the boutique stores and new-age bookshop. I couldn't see Edward, though I could still sense him. Suddenly, the pull seemed to be rushing towards me, very quickly. I looked around the nearly empty sidewalks then groaned as a silver Volvo swiftly turned the corner.

Short of jumping out in front of him, I didn't know what to do to get Edward's attention. He was staring straight ahead and seemed to be intently focused on something, though when I looked in the direction he was staring, I didn't see anything interesting. I tried to wave without drawing too much attention to myself as he passed, but he didn't notice.

He sped past me, and I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk with my hands on my hips, frustrated that I wouldn't get to talk to him, though I didn't honestly know what I would say to him anyway. My stomach roared, and a girl walking by jumped in surprise and stared at me. I smiled sheepishly. "Sorry," I muttered before I started walking again.

If I couldn't talk to Edward, at least I could find some populated place so I could feed on excess energy. The quiet Italian place where the girls wanted to eat didn't seem like it would have enough rowdy patrons to really satisfy my hunger, and besides, I didn't want to try to concentrate on not draining any one person enough to harm them while Jess and Ang tried to carry on a conversation with me.

I wandered in the direction of what I thought to be downtown, already mentally probing and sensing a cluster of buildings where people were congregating. I thought one of the places might be a bar or club, since several of the people inside seemed to be percolating with emotion. I walked determinedly in its direction, not caring that I was leaving the tourist-trap part of town.

I was still about a half mile away from the bar in an empty, run-down, warehouse district, when a group of men came around a corner headed towards me on the sidewalk. I kept my head down as they approached, sensing that their energy was riled up. I thought about feeding from them, but when I tasted their emotions, the man in the front of the group had a distinct tar-like impression that put me off, so I ignored them.

Unfortunately, they didn't ignore me. The group parted before me, and as I walked between them the tar man called out, "Hey, there!" I rolled my eyes while still facing the ground but he was persistent. "Hey, wait!" he shouted behind me.

I sped up a little, because quite frankly I had no intention of playing whatever immature game he was starting. They laughed behind me, and I turned a corner so they couldn't even have the pleasure of staring at my ass as I walked away.

At the next street running parallel to the one I had previously been on, I turned back in the direction I had been heading before I was interrupted. Before long, however, I realized that I heard two sets of footsteps a couple of blocks behind me. I concentrated and realized that they were two of the men from the group I passed, though neither was the man who spoke.

I tried to tell myself that they were probably just headed back to the bars, but I couldn't keep my hackles from being raised. I wouldn't be in any danger from them, unless of course they were vampires, but I quickly dismissed the thought. The Cullens' energy was sturdily attached to them, whereas humans' energy, such as these men's, was fragilely held to them. It was like the difference between the sewing on a top quality garment and that of a dress from a discount superstore.

I ignored them and continued walking to the stop sign up ahead, where I would need to turn right and walk just a couple more blocks to reach the bar. Then I could just stand across the street and feast to my heart's content.

I turned the corner with a bounce in my step at the thought of the meal to come, until I realized that the one way street was between the backs of two warehouses where two men stood, waiting, halfway between me and the next street over. I quickly discerned that they weren't just any two men; the tar man leaned smugly against a wall on one side of the street while his companion shuffled his feet nervously near him.

I wanted to sigh in annoyance, but I had a feeling they would be delighted to get any kind of rise out of me, so I silently scooted to the other side of the street and continued walking, hoping to pass them without a hassle.

"There you are!" the squat tar man shouted to his friend behind me.

"Yeah, we just took a little detour," his friend responded, quietly in comparison. As I approached the waiting men, I looked up from beneath my eyelashes to see the tar man pushing off the wall and walking towards me. I stopped and looked fully in his face for the first time, hoping if I glared he would have enough of a self-preservation instinct to back off. His flat, beady eyes glimmered in the dark as he continued to approach me, and the idiot grinned even wider.

I raised my hand to point a finger at him as I gave him a verbal warning in an exasperated voice. "Stay away from me." His lack of intuition was almost humorous.

"Don't be like that, sugar," he responded as he grabbed the wrist of my lifted hand. The emotions that flowed from him disgusted me. He was a swirling mix of desire, both sexual and sadistic. In the wake of his emotions though, something flowed from him I had never received from a normal human: images of women, crying, screaming, bloody, beaten, and even dead. A list of names whispered to me from his mind accompanied the scenes, and horror washed over me as I realized these were his memories.

Just as soon as the wave of horror passed, though, it was replaced with a vengeful rage. He thought he could make me into another of his helpless victims, in front of witnesses no less? A hot wind swirled up my legs from below, rustling the refuse in the alley and causing it to scatter away from me, though the vermin still held tightly to my arm.

"Hey, Lonnie?" one of his friends whispered. "Just leave her alone, we should go."

Lonnie's eyes were locked on mine, and I could see my face reflected in them. My pupils were blown solid black, nary a glimpse of brown to be seen anymore. He was becoming physically excited at the thought that I might run from him, that he might get to chase me. He longed for a chase, and his grip began to loosen.

A predatory grin spread across my own face and I could see my molars glinting in Lonnie's eyes. "Yes, you should go."

His friends began to back away, leaving the small street, unsure of exactly what was happening in their quickly sobering minds. Lonnie's expression became confused and a little nervous, and he started to move away from me, but I was having none of it. I twisted my hand around to grab his wrist as he started to move away, and his anger flared. "Not you, Lonnie. No, you need to stay," I whispered maliciously, still grinning.

"What the…" he tried to pull away from me, and then he balled his other fist to strike at me when I wouldn't let him go.

Of course, I was faster. My hand whipped out, fingers curled into claws as they raked across his cheek, gouging ribbons of his flesh from his face that peeled down and flapped against his chin as I pulled my hand away. He squealed like a skewered boar and jerked against the arm that still held him, falling to the ground in his efforts. I ignored him, knowing he couldn't break my hold, and examined the crimson liquid on my fingers, gleaming from the dingy light of the streetlamp.

I wondered if it would taste sweet like Anthony's did in my vision, so I slipped all three fingers in my mouth to suck them dry. His blood tasted vaguely rat-like, with just a hint of pork, but it still served to tempt my hunger. I looked at Lonnie on the ground where he whined and cried over a few measly scratches.

I rolled my eyes as I stepped over him, my feet on either side of his legs as I squatted to bring my face to his level as if I was chastising an unruly child. "Lonnie, Lonnie, you've been a very naughty boy."

I put my left hand on his shoulder to keep him still as I began to drain his energy. At first he enjoyed it slightly, despite the pain in his face, but they always enjoy it at first. I dug my fingers into his shoulder blade, and his bones gave way like butter. His mouth opened to scream, and I sucked faster so he wouldn't have enough energy to make it worthwhile.

A car roared down the street behind me and a door opened, but I ignored it. They would only see a pretty, small girl kneeling over a much larger man who seemed to have drunkenly fallen. They wouldn't be able to see his bloody face around my body.

"Bella," a deep, familiar voice called out from the car. It resonated through me, calling to me, and the pull was so strong at his nearness that, without thinking, I let go of Lonnie as he slumped to the ground. "Get in the car."

I wanted to obey the voice, I wanted to follow the pull, but at the same time I was annoyed that my meal had been interrupted. In just another minute or so, I would have all of Lonnie's energy, and then I could feed on his dead flesh. I looked behind me at Edward, and though his face was calm, his eyes were furious, and the weight of my actions fell on me.

I was killing someone, a human, and it didn't matter that he was the scum of the earth, he was still a person. I looked back at Lonnie's maimed and unconscious face in shock, before standing and backing up into the open door of the Volvo. I sank onto the leather seat and closed the door, but I only looked away from the body on the ground after Edward drove us away.

I buckled my seatbelt out of habit as I faced forward while we raced back to the boardwalk. "Did he hurt you?" Edward quietly asked next to me, and I was too ashamed to look at him, knowing the man had technically done nothing to me to warrant my actions.

I looked down at my folded hands as I whispered, "No." A single tear started to slide down my face, and then I shivered as a cool finger caught it before it could drop off my chin.

"Say something to distract me, to calm me down," Edward gritted out between clenched teeth.

I looked at him in shame and tried to blink back the tears that were attempting to escape. Why did he always seem to make me cry? "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

He glanced at me, confused, before turning his eyes back to the street. "Why would you be sorry?"

I sniffled, my tears drying up in my confusion. "Because I tried to kill someone?"

He chuckled darkly, "Oh, he deserved anything you could have possibly done to him and so much more."

I supposed he didn't know exactly what I could have done, but before I could explain, we pulled up in the parking lot of the quaint Italian restaurant where Ang and Jess wanted to eat. As we parked, the girls walked out the door. Angela looked concerned, and Jessica was animatedly waving her hands as she spoke, which she tended to do when she was agitated.

Edward sighed in frustration. "You better go stop your friends before they too wander off to places they do not belong."

I opened the door and walked up to the restaurant, calling to the girls. They both turned to me in relief, but Jess still looked upset as she asked, "Where on Earth have you been?"

I tried to look sheepish as I answered, "I bumped into Edward at the stores, and we started talking and lost track of time." I jerked my thumb in his direction as I looked at him striding up to us from his car, and he waved at my friends.

They smiled back at him but still seemed perturbed with me. I smiled beguilingly. "It was an accident, I promise."

Ang smiled back with a raised eyebrow, and Jess rolled her eyes before smirking. "Okay, all's forgiven. Are you ready to head back home?"

I glanced back at Edward before responding. "Actually, we need to finish our conversation. Is it cool with you if I just catch a ride with him?"

Ang smiled and walked away, calling over her shoulder, "See you tomorrow, Bella."

Jess giggled and then whispered, "And you better be willing to talk, and I want details!"

Edward stepped up beside me as Jess got into her car. They drove away before he spoke. "Is this really such a good idea? Won't your dad be mad if I drive you home?"

I shook my head. "No, he won't be home until the morning, and since I already rode in your car tonight, I'm going to have to shower and wash my clothes as soon as I get home anyway, so he won't smell you."

He nodded in acceptance, and my stomach grumbled. "Do you want to go in and eat?" He jerked his head toward the restaurant, and I grimaced.

"No, thanks. Pasta isn't exactly my thing."

He chuckled. "Yeah, mine either." He winked at me, and my stomach fluttered, but this time I didn't think it had to do with my hunger.

I sighed. "Too bad there isn't a sushi place close by."

He looked curious. "Really? Would that make do for you?"

I shrugged. "It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be better than nothing. Why, do you know of one?"

"In Port Angeles?" He laughed, his lips twisted into his smirk. "Not unless you want to go down to the pier and catch something yourself."

The idea wasn't half bad. I smiled at him, and then I started walking to the harbor.

He laughed under his breath and then started following me. "Bella, you don't even have a reel."

"So, I've got hands, don't I?" I laughed too, and stooped to roll my jeans up above my knees as we reached the small boat ramp leading into the water. I kicked off my shoes and socks and walked into the frigid water until it almost reached my knees.

"I have got to see this," he called after me.

"Oh, you will! Now be quiet and stop scaring away the fish!" I yelled back.

I stood still in the water, and after a couple of minutes, the fish started swimming around me again. I waited until a foot long salmon swam within easy reach. My hand darted out and caught it, and then I flung it up to the top of the boat ramp near Edward. He laughed as it flopped next to him. I caught two more and carried the last one up the ramp by the tail as I left the water.

I sat down next to my catch, slamming a fist against each of their heads to make them stop moving. I looked up at Edward who was still laughing at me, and suddenly felt self-conscious about eating the raw fish in front of him. He'd probably seen worse, but I was pretty sure to be messy since I had never tried it in human form before. "Do you think you could go get me a Diet Coke from the soda machine we passed?"

He looked at me thoughtfully before nodding. "Sure."

He tucked his hands in his pockets and turned back up the street. I managed to eat fairly cleanly and I was rinsing my hands off in the water when he came back with my soda.

I smiled my thanks and tried not to scowl when I realized it was lukewarm. Edward must have seen my facial contortions though because he started to explain, "Oh, sorry. The machine was old. I would have gone to a convenience store if I had known it would be warm. I still can if you want…"

I interrupted, embarrassed to seem ungrateful. "No, no, this is fine. They don't really taste very good to me anymore. I just like the caffeine boost."

He smiled, curious, but willing to let it drop. We walked silently for a while and were almost back to the car when I stopped. He looked back at me in question, and I breathed deeply to gather my gumption. I figured now was as good a time as any to start asking questions, while we were alone and he wasn't on guard.

"Why did you run away from me?" I blurted out. He looked chagrined, then smiled and looked away.

"I had to help Esme, my mom, with some laundry." I got the distinct impression that he was lying, but he didn't seem angry, so I pressed on.

"Edward, tell me the truth. Did I turn you into a vampire?" His head snapped to face me, and he was quite obviously astonished, his mouth hanging open and his eyebrows almost touching his hairline. He became as still as only someone who doesn't need to breathe can, and I stared back, waiting.

We stood for what seemed like an eternity before the door of the restaurant opened and a family walked out. I blinked, and he looked away. "We'll discuss this in the car," he said shakily and walked to the Volvo.

* * *

**E/N: Cliffie? Argh! I know, I'll try to be speedy w/ Ch. 11. REVIEW PLEASE! It makes me oh so happy to read reviews, even if they just say one word, or leave a smiley or something, I read every one, and might even respond! Seriously, I love it, brings a little light to my foggy, dreary day.**

**Come play on the twilighted thread! **

www(dot)twilighted(dot)net(slash)forum(slash)viewtopic(dot)php?f=33&t=3943


	11. Chapter 11 The Best Policy

**A/N: Okay, one last time, peeps! The Cygnet and the Strigoi has made it to the final round of voting for the Indie Twific Awards. Voting is open through July 29. You do not need to have nominated initially to vote now, and these are the small-time fics that NEED YOUR VOTES! The Cygnet and the Strigoi is up for Best Alternate Universe WIP, so, if you like it, go vote!**

**http(colon)(slash)(slash)(slash)vote(dot)aspx **

**Thanks to furious kitten and ShowTunesJesus, betas extraordinaire. Y'all are the apples of my eye, the cream in my coffee, and I wouldn't want to play pattycake with anyone else. And for all the lovely reviewers and thread playas, and favorite-ers and alert-ers… is that a rabbit in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? **

Disclaimer: **All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. In other words, I do not own Twilight.**

* * *

Ch. 11: The Best Policy

It began to rain as we pulled out of the restaurant's parking lot. The slow tracks of water streaming down the windows blurred our surroundings, encapsulating us in our own hushed haven. Edward was still doing his imitation of a statue, and I might have thought it was a neat trick if I wasn't impatiently waiting for him to give me an answer.

I huffed at his continued silence and turned to glare at him. His eyes slanted to me for a second, observing me, before turning back to the road. I lightly slapped his arm to regain his attention, but even that small amount of contact made me want to wrap myself around him. I scooted further away from him in my seat to keep myself in check before I repeated my question.

"Well? Did I turn you into a vampire or not?" It seemed like an easy question to me.

He gave me the same calculating glance. "Are you saying you can turn people into vampires?"

I crossed my arms and narrowed my gaze. "No, I'm asking if I turned you into a vampire."

He ignored me and continued his own line of questioning. "How is it possible for you to turn people into vampires if you are not a vampire yourself?" He almost sounded like he was talking to himself and not to me, but I decided to answer anyway, hoping he would reciprocate in kind.

"I'm not sure if I can or not, but it is highly likely my sister could and did."

His brows furrowed in confusion. "I thought you were an only child?"

I pretended to find the non-existent lint on my jeans extremely fascinating as I turned away from him. I took a breath and hoped that as a mythological creature in his own right, he wouldn't think I was completely crazy. "I'm an only child in this life, but in my past life I apparently had a rather large family."

I could feel his eyes on me, and without looking up at him I whispered, "Watch the road, please."

He turned back to peer through the windshield and inhaled deeply. "I get the feeling when you say 'past life,' you mean that literally."

I nodded, now picking at the non-existent lint.

"Right, and you think you turned me into a vampire during one of these 'past lives'?"

"Past life, singular, and yes, I believe I might have. Want to clear that up for me?" I asked sarcastically.

He smirked at me, which I really thought was inappropriate of him during a conversation that could quite possibly become an argument, but then he might not be aware of the devastating effects his smirk wreaked on my pitiful excuse for self-control.

"No, Bella. You did not turn me into a vampire. Carlisle did in nineteen-eighteen. Were you even alive then?"

From what my dad had mentioned, I would have still been scattered all over the place when Edward became a vampire. However, I refused to believe that it could be a coincidence that I had seen Issy bite a man with Edward's middle name who looked just like him.

"You didn't happen to go by the name Anthony at any time, did you?" I tried to keep the suspicious look off my face, hoping he wouldn't purposely deceive me, but I could feel my face sliding into a disbelieving glare.

He looked at me with surprise and then laughed. "Anthony is supposed to be me, then? I worried for a moment that you were seeing yourself with another man in the future."

He realized that he said too much at the same time I did. His face fell into his familiar mask as he turned back to watch the road, and I felt triumphant that I might actually get some answers.

"Aha! When did you think that? And what are you talking about? Why would I possibly want to be with anyone but you?" I snapped my mouth closed, embarrassed. Now I was the one giving away too much.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel, and his voice was quiet when he answered. "I'm sorry, Bella, I was not trying to spy on you; well, not intentionally. I really came to try and talk to you, but then I saw you having your vision, and then you called that name. My behavior was inexcusable, and I am sorry I did not leave sooner."

"I was talking during my vision?" I was horrified by what I might have said. I knew I used to talk in my sleep, but I had hoped it had gone the way of my clumsiness and my constant craving for Cheetos when I changed. Of all the visions for him to witness, why did it have to be that one? I shrank further back in my seat, wishing I could crawl in a hole somewhere.

"Wait, why would you think I was seeing the future? How did you know I was having a vision, for that matter?"

He tapped his finger on the steering wheel to the rhythm of the song playing on the radio. "When Alice has a vision of the future, she looks exactly like you did, staring off into space; her eyes glaze over, and her whole body tenses." So, Alice had kept the ability to see the future, but did she have any of her memories since I seemed to have at least a few of hers mixed in with my own?

"I wasn't seeing the future; I was seeing my past. I was supposed to remember everything from my last life when I changed, but instead, I just get little snippets here and there."

He looked at me sympathetically. "That hardly seems fair. It must be terribly frustrating." I nodded, grateful he was trying to understand, and he continued. "I take it then that you knew an Anthony in the past who you think looked like me?" I nodded again, and he tapped the steering wheel some more while he thought. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and gentle. "My middle name came from my great-uncle Anthony. My grandfather always said I was his spitting image."

My chest felt tight, and my breath faltered as I asked, "Do you know what happened to him?"

He lifted a hand and smoothed my hair back from my face. "He died of tuberculosis in eighteen-fifty-five in Spain when he was seventeen. My grandfather went to collect his body to bring him home to England. When he reached the village Anthony had been living in, the townspeople had removed his heart and burned it, a common practice during the Industrial Revolution to keep those who died of consumption from coming back as vampires and giving the disease to others. He had supposedly spent his last days with some Swedish women whom the villagers thought were witches, but they had disappeared before my grandfather arrived."

The tightness in my chest had spread to my throat, and I croaked, "Oh."

Edward moved his hand under my hair and gently massaged my stiff neck. "If you don't mind me asking, who exactly were you in your past life, Bella Swan?"

I took a deep breath. If I wanted to keep the lines of communication open, I needed to be completely honest, even if I didn't quite know exactly what the whole truth was. "I was Nemesis, the Goddess of vengeance."

His hand stilled on my neck, but I still took comfort from its cool, smooth presence. "Wow, that's… heavy," he muttered.

I smiled wryly at the modern vernacular that sounded odd coming from his lips. "I concur."

He started to lower his hand from my neck, and without thinking, I raised my own hand to the inside of his elbow. He looked at me questioningly, and I slid my fingertips down his forearm until I fit my hand into his larger one, webbing my fingers between his. I looked up to silently ask if it was all right, and he smiled in response. I felt his happiness flowing from his hand into me, and I curled up on my side, resting my cheek against the headrest so I could watch him as he drove.

"It must be difficult for you to have her memories. I suppose vengeance includes a lot of violence."

I shrugged. "I've mostly seen visions relating to my family so far. Not much violence but still not exactly happy memories."

He was thoughtful again, and I would have reached out to press away the wrinkle between his eyes if he weren't driving. "She was not always just considered a goddess of retribution, you know."

"No, I didn't know. I haven't had time to find out much about her since I learned her name." Well, I had time, I was just too afraid to dig deeply for her.

"Yes, she was once the distributor of both happiness and unhappiness, responsible for making sure humans got their dues. She was also considered to be as beautiful as Aphrodite. The oldest statues of the two goddesses look very similar." He smiled down at me. "I guess it is not too surprising that you would have been one of the most beautiful goddesses of all time."

I smiled back at him and rolled my eyes. I just couldn't help myself. He laughed at me but quickly sobered and looked away. "Her duties seemed to have changed when Zeus took notice of her." He paused, and I raised an eyebrow. He sighed and reluctantly continued. "He pursued her, wanted to lie with her, but she resisted. She turned into a goose to get away from him, but he turned into a swan and caught her. Later, she laid an egg, and when it hatched, Helen came out, who was adopted by Leda, and ran away with Paris to Troy. In some versions of the story, Nemesis directed Helen to go with Paris; in others, she was mad at her daughter for doing so."

"Wow, the Trojan war, not exactly something I want laid at my feet." I grimaced, and he chuckled.

"I imagine not. The Romans later attributed Nemesis with envy instead of retribution which never really made sense to me. They described her as a gruesome goddess to be feared. In some parts of Greece, though, she was still worshipped as a goddess of divine wrath, even after Christianity began to spread from Rome."

I could feel his concern as he watched me struggle with the things he told me. "Those are just the myths that have survived, Bella. We do not know if they are true or not."

I stared at him, perplexed. "You of all people should know better than to doubt myths. How do you know all of this, anyway?"

He smiled sheepishly. "Since I don't sleep at night, I have a lot of free time to read, and I pick up a lot of trivial information when I hear other people's minds."

I started to pull my hand away from him, hoping distance would keep him from being able to read my mind as clearly, the way Dad needed to touch someone to hear their exact thoughts. Edward wouldn't let me go though. I looked at him in panic, and he chuckled.

"I can't read your mind, Bella." I frowned at him since his words seemed to belie themselves. How could he know what I was thinking if he couldn't read my mind? "Your face, on the other hand, is an open book."

Irate, I tried to pull my hand away again, but he laughed and lifted it to his lips. He pressed a brief, light kiss to my knuckles, and I sucked in a breath as I ceased my struggle. His eyes darkened as he saw my complacence, and he kissed my hand again more firmly, holding it to his mouth for just a moment longer. I wondered how it was possible that his cold lips could send fire down my veins and through my body. He smirked at me as he lowered our hands back to the center console.

"Your dad can read minds, can't he? I would think that would bother you more than the idea that I could."

"He can't read my mind either, and he can mostly only hear emotions if he's not touching someone." I felt bad for a second for revealing the weakness in my dad's ability to someone he considered an enemy, but I was certain Edward wouldn't use the information to harm him.

He slipped his hand away from mine, and I thought he was going to change gears, but he placed it back on the steering wheel. "What about you, can you read minds?"

His move suddenly made sense. "Why, are you afraid I might know what you've been thinking?" His mask fell into place. "I'm just teasing you. It's something else I've forgotten. I can pick up emotions if I'm touching someone, and sometimes I can see people's memories if they're really concentrating, but I can barely hear Dad's exact thoughts when he claims to be screaming them in his mind."

He moved his hand back to the console, resting it palm up and looked at me apologetically. I placed my hand back in his, and he rubbed my knuckles with his thumb. "Was your father a god too? Please tell me he wasn't Zeus," he said, with horror at the thought.

I thought of the story he had told me, and I shuddered with disgust. "Ugh, no. He ferried souls to the underworld."

He smiled. "Sort of like what he does now, isn't it? Bringing people to their judgment."

I smiled in return. "I guess, though I doubt he was ticketing people for chariot racing down the street back in the day."

He laughed and then inquired, "You said you had a large family in your past life. Are they all reincarnated somewhere, too?"

I considered how much I should reveal to him. If Alice knew more than we presumed, she could be plotting any number of things. She could be the real reason the Cullens were in Forks. I felt like the care and concern I sensed from Edward were genuine, though, so in my mind it all came down to who he would choose to side with. If I told him the truth now, would he be willing to help me if I needed him to?

"The sister I mentioned earlier? The one who made the vampire?" I watched his face for any signs of understanding or withdrawal, but he remained curious.

"Yes?"

"The vampire she made was actually the very first vampire, and we know she is alive now as a vampire herself."

I watched as gears seemed to click into place in his mind. He looked at me excitedly and sat up. Letting go of my hand, he started digging in his pocket for his wallet, which he then flipped open and placed between his legs so he could pull out a folded piece of stationary.

He handed the paper to me with a grin. "From our mutual acquaintance, Tanya."

I opened the paper, smoothing out the carefully and sharply folded creases. I didn't know what Tanya could possibly have to write regarding me considering she had only ever seen me as Swan, but I was extremely curious to find out.

She started out by telling Edward not to bother trying to contact her until after he and I had a chance to talk, because she felt more loyalty to her past than to him. She told him I was neither human nor vampire, that I could deny him nothing, and that she suspected that I was newly changed and my powers were volatile. She somehow knew that I was supposed to have many millennia of memories, but apparently she didn't know that they were only coming to me a few at a time. She encouraged him to give me a chance, and ended by saying that blood is thicker than water.

Suddenly, Tanya knowing how to give me her energy made sense. If she was once one of us and had retained her memories, then of course she would know about us feeding off energy. It also increased the possibility that Alice knew of her own past. What were the chances that two Children of Nyx were now both vampires, knew each other, and one of them wouldn't know of their past? Slim, at best.

"Can I keep this to show my dad?"

He shrugged. "Sure. I can't believe as long as Carlisle has known her she managed to keep this a secret. Who was she? A dryad? A muse? Philotes, goddess of sexual intercourse?"

I felt a stab of jealousy for the relationship he must have had with the beautiful girl. We hadn't talked about Tanya before, but I hoped he knew that I wasn't willing to share him. However, I wasn't ready to present him with an ultimatum just yet. "I'm sorry, I don't know. We were all the children of the Goddess of Night, Nyx. I'm not aware of any other daemons or gods being reincarnated."

He nodded, smiling like he'd solved a puzzle. "Philotes, then. So she made the first vampire?"

I shook my head, and he frowned. "Edward, I didn't even know about Tanya." I took a breath and continued. "Alice was my sister who created the vampire, who I believe to be Jasper. Did Carlisle turn Alice into a vampire? Or did Tanya?"

He looked at me in confusion. "Alice? She doesn't know who changed her. She and Jasper showed up on our doorstep in nineteen-fifty, and she has no memories from her life before she became a vampire."

He let me grab his hand again, and his confusion was genuine. He realized what I was doing and pulled his hand away again, looking hurt. "Don't you trust me?"

I sighed. "Alice was my sister. We had apparently been companions for thousands of years when she decided to betray our family and destroy us. She had me murdered, Edward. She is the reason I had to be reborn, and now my memory is fractured. How am I supposed to trust anyone?"

"Please don't blame Alice now for what happened then. She doesn't remember her human life, much less any other. I've seen her mind, I know."

"Are you sure she couldn't have hidden it from you? You know, just not have thought about it when you were around or something? Is she able to do that?"

I watched as doubt settled across his face, but rather than feeling like my fears were justified, I just felt a cold, sickening knot in the pit of my stomach. I wished I could believe Alice wasn't up to Lyssa's old tricks. I wanted to think we could just all be happy in our lives now, but I didn't want my current happiness to be ripped away by an angry ex-sister.

He looked at me sadly, "She couldn't have hidden something this important from me; she wouldn't have." He truly wanted to believe it, but I could tell he wasn't positive.

"She hid it from an entire family of telepaths, Edward, for who knows how long. She plotted with our enemies, and no one knew."

He was silent as he lowered his palm again for me to hold. When we were linked again I felt his craving for the comfort of my hand, and I grieved for making him suspicious of someone he considered a sister and a friend. I felt his spark of hope before he spoke.

"You don't actually remember what happened, do you? How do you know for sure that Alice did anything? Are you certain your source can be trusted?"

I wanted to be able to tell him it was possible that it was all a misunderstanding, and that maybe the vampires had attacked of their own volition, but Dad seemed so sure that we were betrayed, and I didn't want to delude Edward.

"My father thinks someone betrayed us; he thinks it was Alice, and we don't know if she remembers or not. I trust my dad implicitly, Edward. He's a good man, a great parent, and my best friend. He wouldn't jump to this conclusion on a whim."

He gently squeezed my hand. "I know the Chief is a good man, Bella, but obviously he was wrong to not trust me, so he could be wrong about this too."

"But Edward, he doesn't trust you because you're a vampire. It's all related."

He looked perplexed. "Why, because Alice is a vampire now?"

I closed my eyes in frustration, not wanting to be the one to have to tell him this. "Edward, do you really not know? The vampires destroyed my family. They had been fighting for centuries with the Strigoi Vii…"

"Strigoi Vii? The witches? What do they have to do with anything?"

I chuckled unhappily, realizing that he had been fed false beliefs somewhere along the way. "The Children of Nyx are the Strigoi Vii, not witches."

He whistled low, and I opened my eyes to see his angry and calculating expression. "The Volturi, our leaders if we have any, told Carlisle and all of the vampires that the Strigoi Vii were shape-shifting witches who killed vampires to use their venom in bogus potions. They were using it as an excuse to kill all shifters which many of us, Carlisle included, didn't believe in. Word spread in the eighteen-fifties, though, that they had managed to kill all of the Strigoi Vii, so the genocide of the other shifters stopped. Was that your whole family, Bella?"

I laughed bitterly. "They spared the men, and some women, though the females they left alive probably wished they hadn't. They made sure they couldn't have children. The rest of us, they dismembered and scattered so that we couldn't be reborn right away."

We were both quiet, and I listened to the rain on the roof of the Volvo and the soft beat of the song playing quietly on the radio. For a moment, we could have been any boy and girl on the ride home from a date, maybe a movie and dinner, maybe a night at a club listening to their favorite Indie band. They would be tired but trying to think of anything they could do to prolong the evening. The conversation wouldn't get any deeper than planning their next outing.

However, Edward hadn't been a normal boy in almost a hundred years and I, well, even before I changed I had never fit in. I had never really had friends other than my dad, and I hated where I lived, only ever wanting to be somewhere dark, rainy and overgrown. Hell, I was too angsty for the emo kids. Before this lifetime, as far as I could tell, Issy had never been a normal girl either, though she seemed to have relished her differences. Maybe our relationship was destined to be complex and generally screwed up. I sighed into the stillness.

Edward rubbed my knuckles again, and I wondered if he knew how it distracted me. "No wonder your dad doesn't want me around. If I were him, I would have hauled you away as soon as I found out there were vampires in town."

"Don't say that! He still might, you know. I think the only reason he hasn't is because he can't really be sure anywhere else is safe. After all, a family of peace loving, wannabe hippie, vegetarian vampires doesn't come along every day."

He smirked. "I'll make sure to pass along those thoughts to Emmett. During the sixties he always said hippies made him feel itchy."

I laughed, picturing the large boy skirting around a long-haired, hemp and tie-dye wearing fellow on a sidewalk, scratching his pale, hard skin as he went.

Edward smiled at my laughter, his own careful happiness filling me. "We'll make this work, Bella. The past can only affect us if we let it."

I shuddered, thinking of Alice's psychic abilities and knowing she could be plotting to part us irrevocably. "It's the future I'm worried about."

"Well, don't. I'm not going anywhere without you, and I'll find some way to earn your father's trust so he won't even think of taking you away from me. Then we'll be together, and I dare say, I think we'd be pretty much invincible." He smiled cheerfully as he said it, but his apprehension flooded me.

I smiled back in return anyway, knowing he needed some reassurance. We quietly held hands for the few remaining miles into Forks, and then I slid down in my seat so I wouldn't be spotted by any patrolmen who might be cruising the streets. The last thing we needed was for the Chief to catch wind of Edward giving me a ride home before we had formulated a plan to get him on our side.

I told him to stop a block away from my house, just in case someone saw his car, but he said me walking in the rain would raise more suspicions than a silver car turning around in my driveway. He pulled up as close to my front door as he could and put the car in park. He turned to me, taking my left hand in his as he tilted my chin up with his right hand to look at him. "Promise me you won't worry tonight. Have sweet dreams for me since I can't sleep."

I nodded, thinking I would have sweet dreams of him if I had any control over them, but I didn't want to sound like a complete sap by saying it out loud.

He slowly tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering on my forehead. "Can I give you a ride to school in the morning?"

I grimaced. "Sorry, Dad will be home then."

"I guess we can just figure out what we're going to do at lunch, then."

"Right, Operation Get the Chief On Our Side."

He chuckled. "Exactly. Goodnight, Bella."

"Goodnight," I responded, but neither of us made a move. His fingers rested in my hair, and his eyes lowered from mine to my lips. Slowly, so slowly icebergs could have passed him, Edward's head lowered to mine. My heart sped up and seemed to flutter into my throat, like a butterfly trying to escape a net.

I wanted to keep my eyes open, to watch his golden eyes come closer until they were covered by paler golden lashes, but my eyelids had a mind of their own. Unfortunately, so did Edward, and his mind was firmly entrenched in the mores of the early twentieth century, because he pressed his lips lightly to my forehead.

The desire that flowed from him was far deeper than a kiss to the head, though, and it served to stoke my own need. I opened my eyes to see him hovering just a couple of inches away from me, and the craving in his gaze as he stared at my lips made up my mind for me.

Before he could pull away, I reached my hands up, holding onto his face, my fingertips rasping over his prominent jaw-line. I pulled him close again as I leaned in, and this time, my eyes might have narrowed, but they definitely did not close. I pressed my lips to his without hesitation and watched his topaz eyes widen before they were swallowed with blackness. A rumbling moan erupted from his throat and his eyelids lowered in acquiescence. I knew I shouldn't press him any further tonight, and I wanted to fall asleep with t t t he memory of him being overcome by our kiss, so I swiftly moved one hand to open the door behind me and then darted into the rain and in the house.

I was still leaning against the front door, trying to remember how to breathe, when I heard a strange chiming sound. I deduced it wasn't the doorbell, wondered if I was hearing rather distinct ringing in my ears, and then realized the sound was coming from my pocket. I reached in and pulled out my cell phone, knowing full well only three people knew the number, and Renee and Dad would have called the house phone.

Edward's name flashed on the screen, and I flipped it open then stood staring at it held out in my hands until I heard his silken voice question, "Bella?"

I jerked the phone to my ear and responded, "Yes! Yes, I'm here."

"Did I do something wrong?" His voice was clipped as he spoke, but I could hear the underlying worry.

I held in laughter. He was being so careful, and I had obviously overstepped my bounds, yet he was the one questioning his actions. "No, no Edward. It was just time for me to come inside." Before I tried to rip your clothes off.

He exhaled in relief. "Alright, then. Goodnight, Bella."

I savored his voice and the sound of his light breathing before I answered, "Goodnight, Edward."

I heard him click off, and I flipped my phone closed then listened as he drove out of the driveway and down the street. I pushed away from the door and headed upstairs, stopping in the bathroom to turn on the shower and let the water heat up before I went into my room to grab my pajamas.

When I walked back into the bathroom, the room was already filled with steam, and I was glad I wasn't going to have to wait to get in the shower since I was exhausted enough to fall asleep where I was standing.

I climbed in the shower, pulling the curtain closed behind me. I swayed unsteadily on my feet and had a moment to realize that the steam was much thicker than usual before my mind was taken over.

I was moving through the fog, only able to see a couple feet in front of me. My hand held two leashes almost at shoulder height that appeared to disappear into the nothingness ahead of me, but I could hear my hounds snuffling in the lead, guiding me forward through the murk. I heard a sound coming towards me, wooden wagon wheels, and I could smell oxen. My beasts growled, but a tug kept them in line.

A dim light pierced the gloom as the wagon approached, swaying with the slow movements of the vehicle. The drover clucked at his animals, and one of my hounds barked in return.

"Who goes there?" The shaky voice of an old man called out as he pulled the oxen to a halt. I stepped into the small ring of light cast by his lamp, knowing that my presence would not put him at ease if he recognized me as most in these parts would.

One of his eyes was clouded with a cataract, but the other squinted at me, examining me carefully, first eyeing the wolf-skins draped around me, then seeing that my chiton was above my knees, barely grazing my hunting boots. His eyes widened in fear, and he touched the front of his hood reverently.

"Goddess, how may I serve you this evening?"

I doubted the half-blind man would be much good to me, but he was trying to be helpful, so I answered. "Have you seen my sister, Nemesis, tonight?"

He shivered at my high-pitched voice and responded quickly, "No, Goddess, though the fog is thick and my eyesight is poor."

I sighed. "As I thought. Be on your way."

I suppressed the urge to touch his oxen, to spread my madness, because the man had tried to help me, and he deserved to go home to a warm bed in peace. Those who called me a cruel Goddess had not experienced my true generosity.

I continued on my way, listening to every sound in the night, and I became nervous when the sounds of the insects and small creatures of the night suddenly stopped. A shrill bird cry erupted through the stillness, and I screamed in reply, "Nemesis!"

My voice echoed back to me through the fog, sibilant in the darkness, and I felt chilled. These were dangerous times when even I could fear the night. Of course, I alone knew that a threat unlike any we had known approached on the horizon, threatening to consume us, and the actions of this night could very well be the catalyst.

My hounds stopped snuffling and then started pulling at their leads, desperate to reach the scent they sought. I allowed them to pull me forward, levitating slightly off the ground so they would not need to drag me. They took me up a hill and the fog began to thin.

Ahead, lying on a cliff's edge, a crumpled, nude woman was curled into herself. I pulled the dogs to a stop a few feet away from her, and they sat, patiently waiting. I absent-mindedly handed them each a dead serpent from my pouch before I walked up to the woman, hoping that our mother, Night, would not allow anything to happen to my sister while under her watchful gaze.

I knelt by the woman's head, moving her long, umber tresses away from her face. Her lovely eyes, normally wide with joy, stared vacantly ahead of her at nothing. Her skin was bruised and her arms were bent at unnatural angles in front of her. I knew only another deity could have twisted her nearly unbreakable bones, and the madness rose up inside of me along with bile.

I lifted my face, turning in the direction of Olympus and yelled, "You will pay! Know this, you will pay!"

The broken girl in front of me was mumbling, and I quieted to listen. "Swan is stronger. Swan is stronger. I will never be a goose again." She repeated her strange mantra, and I cried for her, wracking sobs I had not cried in centuries.

Eventually, I controlled myself once more, and I lifted Nemesis in my arms. She screamed when I touched her arms, but I adjusted her, and the sound became a whimper. I allowed the dogs to pull us home as I soared behind them with my broken sister curled against me.

We soon reached our dark palace by the river Styx. Servants and siblings scattered out of my way as we headed to our brother's quarters. Charon and Thanatos leaned over a table, staring at a map when I entered. They took one look at me, and Charon rolled the map and Thanatos cleared the table so I could lay Nemesis across it.

Thanatos' pale blue eyes were anguished as they examined her. He glanced up at me, mentally as broken as our sister was physically. "Who did this to her?"

I sneered at him, stepping close though it meant I had to tilt my head completely back to glare into his eyes. "Who do you think? She told you the lightning God was trying to woo her, but you ignored her. Since when does he take no for an answer?"

"He knows our might. He fears nothing more than our sisters, the Fates. Why would he attack one of us?"

I grabbed his shoulders and shook him, and in his surprise, he actually let me. "Not everything is political, brother. This was a matter of lust for a beautiful girl, and when she turned him down, because she is loyal above all else, he took what he wanted anyway."

I stopped shaking him because my gaze was clouding, converging with a vision. Bits and pieces of the future flashed across my mind. An egg, a stunningly beautiful blonde girl, a war fought between the humans but sponsored by split factions of Gods and Goddesses, and Nemesis, ripe with vengeance, orchestrating it all.

"It is the beginning of the end, brother."

"She's morphing!" Charon shouted behind us. We turned to see Nemesis shrinking, changing, feathers sprouting across her skin, but instead of a goose as she normally preferred, she became a swan.

I blinked my eyes in surprise, and I was back in my shower. I stood beneath the pelting water, allowing its warmth to seep into me and heat my chilled bones. I had recognized my beaten body and even Alice's voice in the vision. I assumed the incident I saw was the aftermath of Zeus forcing himself upon Nemesis, but I was surprised that Lyssa seemed to care about what happened to Nemesis and even more surprised by her own vision of what was to come.

I finished my shower and dragged myself to my room. I took the clothes I had worn back to the bathroom and washed them by hand to speed up the process. I took them downstairs to dry, though, and luckily they were finished relatively quickly. I carried them back to my room and collapsed onto my bed.

I didn't know what we were going to say to Dad, or what was really in store for us, but about three things I was absolutely positive. First, in order to gain Alice's confidence, I would need to remind her of the true sisterly bond we once shared. Second, Edward promised to stay with me, no matter what, and I had a feeling his resolve was going to be tested very soon. And third, there was a part of me, and I don't know how large that part was, that thought the person I should distrust the most was myself.

* * *

**E/N: REVIEW PLEASE! I love reviews, whether they are the big spoonful of hot-fudge kind or little sprinkle kind, they all make life so much sweeter!**

**Come play on the twilighted thread! **

www(dot)twilighted(dot)net(slash)forum(slash)viewtopic(dot)php?f=33&t=3943


	12. Chapter 12 Bursar of Happiness

A/N: Welcome back! Sorry for the wait, you lovely, fabulous readers. This chapter was difficult for some reason, but now it's whipped into shape ;-) And a very special thank you to ShowTunesJesus and furious kitten, most excellent betas, Goddesses of all things grammar and awesomeness, for not throwing their hands up in disgust no matter how big, small or utterly bizarre my errors may be.

Please take a moment to kowtow to goldenmeadow, who pwns me like no other and wrote a lush and exuberant recommendation for tCatS at the Fictionators blog (www(dot)fictionators(dot)com) and if you're not reading her hilarious, irreverent and terribly brilliant Dead Confederates… go forth now and be converted to Religion Rebelward. I also highly recommend taking a moment to peruse her slashy bit of fabulousness and heartache Incarcerated.

Disclaimer: **All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. In other words, I do not own Twilight, or anything by Thornton Wilder. And the yearbook line is 99 percent coined by Rie, who hopefully won't evict me from the attic for my blatant thievery. (2 shout-outs in one A/N and both totally earned).**

* * *

Chapter 12: Bursar of Happiness

I woke when Dad's cruiser pulled into our driveway, and I watched the glare from his headlights cut across my room and eventually stop on my closet as he parked. Staring at the illuminated door, I recalled the nights during my summertime visits when I insisted on having a flashlight by my bed in case monsters (alligators in particular) decided to sneak out of my closet. Despite now knowing that light didn't scare the kind of monsters I should be worrying about, and in fact made some of them glisten, in a way I still wished I had a flashlight beside my bed, preferably the kind my dad carried on him that could also be used as a weapon. If I was being perfectly honest with myself, hitting a monster over the head with a flashlight probably wouldn't be as effective as hitting one with my fists.

Dad entered the house and wandered about, and though he was probably trying not to make enough noise to wake me, I listened to his ascension up the stairs. I turned my gaze away from the closet door to the bedroom door, wondering if I should confront him before he went to take his shower. My vision from earlier in the night had raised more questions than it answered, and I was even more frustrated than before at Dad and Thane's teaching method, allowing me to flounder across a vision with just the barest of an idea of what I was seeing, and only then would they tell me another disturbing fact of my past life.

Thinking of Thane sparked another flare of annoyance in my already agitated mind. So much for the curmudgeonly librarian I had always pictured in my head when I spoke to him. Despite the fact that the voices in Lyssa's memory were not speaking English, there was no denying that the handsome black-haired man called Thanatos sounded exactly like Thane. There was also no denying that he was quite obviously not just some researcher, not the "supernatural customer service" I had assumed him to be. Thane was a man in charge of everyone around him, a leader, and Lyssa had brought her sister's broken body to him with words indicating that he was indirectly responsible for her abuse.

I remembered seeing him in the second vision I ever had, fighting with a red-eyed man I now knew to be a vampire, and for some reason I had a vaguer memory of the two of us dancing. Also, a feeling welled up inside of me as the images floated through my mind that I had once been fonder of Thane than of my other siblings, even more than Dad during his previous incarnation and definitely more than Lyssa with her strange love/hate games.

Itching to get out of bed, corner Dad, and demand a teleconference with the mysterious and dubiously helpful Thane, I clutched my comforter to my chin, knowing if I went on the offensive now, I was not going to help Edward's and my case. We needed Dad to be open-minded before he'd even let us try to convince him that we needed to be together, and making him wary of my motives by yelling at him about Thane was not the way to go.

Reluctantly conceding that nothing would be gained by trying to talk to Dad at the moment, I rolled over on my stomach and closed my eyes. Sleep didn't return to me, and I punched my pillow in frustration, only to be startled a moment later when I smelt the distinct musk and felt the delicate sensation of feathers settling on my skin. I sat up, staring at my arms incredulously, disturbed by the feeling of rightness that settled in my stomach at the sight of my arms covered in down. Unfortunately, my bed was also covered with the stuff, and my pillow was irreparably ruined. I couldn't stop the laugh that gurgled up, and I didn't even try. Sinking back onto my bed, I chuckled myself to sleep.

Dad wasn't waiting up for me when I came downstairs in the morning, and half of me was appreciative I wouldn't have the opportunity to muck everything up before Edward and I could talk. The other half was easily silenced with a mug of the strong black liquid Dad had set the coffee-maker to produce for me at just the right time for it to still be piping hot as I walked out into the pleasant chill of the morning. Bless the confounding man.

I pulled into the parking lot determined to talk to Edward before class, but before I could make my way to the Volvo, Jess ran up to me holding a bundle of black fabric by two fingers with a look of disgust like it had cooties. I recognized my hoodie and took it from her, stuffing it into my backpack with a mumbled "Thanks."

"So?" She queried.

I just looked at her, examining her face for a clue as to what exactly she was "so"-ing.

She huffed, and I think she wanted to shake me, but she clasped her hands in front of her in a move that was almost venerative. "C'mon, Bella, don't hold out on me! Did you plan to meet up or what?"

I glanced behind her to see if Edward was listening, and though he was looking away from us, his smirk indicated that he was indeed catching the one-sided conversation. I wanted to be annoyed by his smugness, but I was too overwhelmed by the sight of him casually leaning against his car (a sight that by all rights only had a place in a magazine ad) waiting for me. ME of all people, the girl whose only friend until recently was her father, the girl who blended in with the limitless browns of the dessert she grew up in, the girl who now knew she was once a demanding and vengeful goddess.

I turned back to Jess with a smile. "We'll talk all about it in Trig."

I didn't miss the grateful twist of her lips before she adopted a knowing grin. "You bet we will. Go do tasteless things now and give me the deets later," she finished with a wink before she pranced back to our group of friends.

I laughed under my breath as she walked away, and I continued my trek to the Volvo. Edward didn't look up as I approached, so I stepped up close to him, just a hair's breadth apart when our eyes finally met. He still smirked, but I could sense his concern even though we weren't quite touching. I smiled up at him, hoping I radiated cautious joy, and his smirk relaxed into a gentle smile.

"Hey, you. Glad I didn't scare you off," I whispered for his ears alone.

"Oh, yes, I was terrified, but I thought I'd take my chances," he cheekily assured me.

He lifted one hand to brush my hair from my cheek and then ran his fingers down to my chin to tilt it up. His head lowered and our lips met, softly, naturally, and though my heart seemed to stop in exhilaration and my lips tingled where they touched his, it felt like our mouths were always meant to be pressed together. His other hand came around and soothed a path down to the small of my back, pressing me closer until the rest of our bodies mimicked the cordial meeting of our lips.

The simple pleasure of the moment was interrupted by the sounds of catcalls from the direction Jess had gone and the sound of a throat clearing close behind me. We parted, and I turned around to find Coach Clapp frowning at us with his hands on his hips, though his eyes twinkled with amusement.

"Mr. Cullen, Ms. Swan, need I remind you that public displays of affection will not be tolerated on school grounds?"

It seemed pretty ridiculous that we would get called out on a chaste little kiss, but I swallowed back any retort. "Sorry, sir."

His eyes moved up to Edward behind me. "Understood, sir."

Coach Clapp nodded and walked away, and I turned back to Edward.

"You have to be kidding me. No man who wears shorts that tight has any right to lecture about PDA or any other untoward behavior," I muttered with disgust.

He chuckled and swiftly glanced over my head at the Coach's retreating back before dipping his head for one last peck on the lips.

As his head lifted I smiled back at him but tried to sort the conflicting emotions I felt from him. "So, why'd you do that?" He quirked an eyebrow at me as if to ask if I was really complaining about his kiss. "I mean, last night you didn't seem to really want to…"

"I definitely wanted to, I just wasn't sure if the time was right."

I could tell that he was being honest, but there was still something off with his emotions. "Okay, but why did you really kiss me today?"

He shot a glance towards my group of friends, and I followed his gaze. Angela shyly waved, and Jess tossed me a thumbs up, but Mike's glare indicated that not everyone was so happy for me.

"Jessica has big plans to interrogate you later on today, and she was going to ask you if I had kissed you. I was just graciously keeping you from having to confess that you were the one who couldn't keep your hands to yourself." It was almost surprising that his face hadn't frozen into a smirk as often as he used it.

"So you were just trying to save me some embarrassment?" He nodded, but it still wasn't the whole truth. I shook my head at him with a disappointed frown. "That's not it. Try again."

Realizing he wasn't going to get away with lying to me, he sighed. "Your friend Mike over there was wondering about the two of us, so I thought I'd make it clear that you are my girl."

I should have been at least a little ticked off that he had the nerve to refer to me as a possession in the twenty-first century, but the way he called me "his girl" had a ring of truth and pride, and I imagined him as a young boy at the beginning of the twentieth century, hoping to someday call someone his. My eyes stung a little, so I let my thoughts follow another path until I remembered the other girl I had thought was his.

"If you're going to call me 'your girl,' I better be the only one!" I tried to sound like I was joking, but I felt like it came out more like a jealous fishwife.

His smile held true but he seemed perplexed by my statement. "Of course you're my only girl. You have no idea how long I've been waiting for you."

A surprised laugh escaped me, and once he realized what I found funny an answering chuckle rumbled out of him. "Okay, maybe you do know how long, so you should know how foolish it would be for me to even think of another girl."

My laughter quieted as a twinge of guilt shot through me. I shouldn't be happy that he spent a hundred years alone. After all, Issy was married to someone when she had her affair with Anthony. I nearly groaned aloud. What must he think about me having the memory of sleeping with his great-uncle? I didn't want to borrow any more trouble than I already had on my plate so I put the thought out of my mind.

Luckily, he interrupted my distressing thoughts. "Have you thought about what we can say to your father? Not knowing him, it's been hard for me to come up with a solid plan."

I glanced up at him, thinking about my vision from the previous night and my determination to try to engender trust in Alice. I glanced around, and when I didn't see his siblings, I said, "I think we should get your family involved, especially Alice."

He mulled it over for a moment before asking, "Wouldn't Alice be the last person he would trust since he thinks she betrayed your family?"

I shook my head with a smile. "If we go to her, we show that we trust her, and maybe she'll be more willing to open up to us. If she really has no memory of her past life and she and Dad get along, then his biggest objection to us is busted."

"But what if she does indeed have some of her old memories and is planning something?"

I could tell the words pained him to say, so I lifted my hands to rub his arms in comfort. "If she is plotting something, then that will be a bigger concern than anything the Chief can throw at us. I'm hoping that if we show her trust, she'll let her guard down and show us her true intentions, one way or the other."

He nodded in agreement though he was still concerned. Reaching his arms around me in a loose hug, he rested his chin on top of my head with a sigh.

"Hey," I whispered with my cheek lightly pressed to his chest, "Weren't you the one who said we'd be invincible? Like some superhero, crime-fighting duo?"

His firmer-than-humanly-possible pectorals shook against my face as he chuckled. "Not quite what I meant. I can't really see myself donning tights anytime soon."

I pulled my face away to grin at him licentiously as I wiggled my eyebrows up and down. "I can see you in tights, and what a sight it is."

His response was interrupted by the sound of the first bell. We both sighed, and he grabbed my hand to walk me to class. We stopped outside of the room, and I argued with myself to let his hand go so he could go on to his own building.

"I'll see you at lunch and we'll talk to Alice." I nodded, and he pressed his lips to my forehead before turning and heading to his class.

When I entered the room, Mike was already waiting next to my usual seat, and I could tell he was struggling to keep a blank expression. Before I could ask what was wrong, Mr. Mason entered and announced a pop quiz. I groaned along with everyone else as an act of solidarity and because I didn't want my friend sitting next to me for an hour stewing about whatever was bothering him.

I didn't have a chance to talk to Mike during class, and as soon as the bell rang, he was out of his seat and through the door, leaving Eric to escort me to Government. Jessica was waiting for me outside the door when the class was over, and she practically skipped all the way to Trig as she barraged me with questions.

"So how long have you two really been seeing each other?" she asked with a glimmer in her eye.

"Well, I don't know if I'd say we're seeing each other…"

"I would! And don't try to pretend last night was your first date or whatever. You were far too comfortable and, I don't know, familiar this morning, so 'fess up! How long have you really been at it?" She smiled as she interrogated like she'd caught me with my hand in the cookie jar.

Old Bella would have been beet red by now, but I just shrugged. What could I say to her? After a couple hundred years of chasing the fellow, cuddling in the parking lot just seems natural. No amount of falsely injected sarcasm could make that sound like anything but the words of a mad woman.

"Edward just makes it easy to be around him." And easy to touch him, and easy to kiss him…

"Ummm, how 'bout no? Most girls can't even talk to him without stuttering, and you just walked up to him all nonchalant this morning and made yourself cozy. I'm onto you, Bella Swan."

I laughed at her accusation. "Well, get off me then," I responded with a smile. We had reached the classroom, but of course Jess didn't let up.

"Have you decided if you're going to be exclusive yet?" There was a certain weight to her question that I wondered at, but knowing that Edward would most likely be listening in for the answer if he was within range, I decided to give a playful response, despite the fact that we had already discussed the subject.

"I think we're both still a bit too young to settle down just yet. I might want to play the field a little bit more before I make any kind of commitment." I hoped Edward would catch my teasing tone since he could only be considered young in comparison to my primordial spirit.

Jessica's smile was tight, and I thought back to my answer to try to figure out what had displeased her. When I still couldn't think of anything, I patted her hand with a smile. She relaxed some, though I could read a sense of panic and unhappiness coming from her and realized she had been hoping my exclusivity with Edward would mean I was off the market and would no longer be competition.

"Although, I am the jealous type, so I might have to buckle him down soon," I teased, and she giggled, relaxing further.

Over the next two classes, she continued with her questions, and I responded in half-truths of varying degrees. She wanted to know what we talked about on the way home ("history" made her call me a hopeless dork, "him meeting my dad" nearly made her fall from her chair in a parody of a swoon), if his car had a good sound system ("ummm, yes?" because what do I know about cars?), how long we made out (to which I actually told the truth, that I had forced a kiss on him and then run inside the house like a complete freak). She told me I somehow must have done something right to earn the greeting I received that morning.

We walked to lunch without Mike for once, and I informed her I would be eating with all of the Cullens. Her eyes widened, and she sincerely replied, "Good luck winning over Little Miss Eerie and the Queen of Mean!"

I slapped my hand over my mouth to stifle my laugh as she walked to the line, and I waited for Edward who I could feel entering through the doors behind me. I turned to him when he was close enough to hear me and reached out my hand. "I don't feel like juggling any props today; let's just go sit down."

He smirked in response and allowed me to tug him to his family's usual table. We were the first ones there since his family insisted on buying food they wouldn't eat. We sat across from each other but kept our hands clasped together. Emmett approached first with a friendly smile that was still somewhat intimidating and waved a meaty hand that was holding a bottle of soda. I was momentarily thankful that he wouldn't actually be drinking it, considering the amount of foam that I could see building up inside the pressurized container, until Edward pointed one long finger at him and muttered, "Don't you dare."

His smile briefly turned into a mocking pout before returning with a rumbling laugh. Rosalie approached behind him and sat without a glance in Edward's and my direction. Alice floated to the seat next to me, her eyes meeting Edward's questioningly. "Just let her talk," he gently responded to her silent question, and her eyes darted to me before she gave one short nod.

Jasper appeared next to her, wrapping one arm around her shoulders to give her comfort and to show us that they were a unified front, though he smiled politely as he did it. Even from two seats away I could feel him radiating calmness, which I found odd since I couldn't even feel anything from Edward at the moment, though he sat across from me.

I returned Jasper's smile before looking back to Alice who raised an eyebrow as if encouraging me to get on with it. As I carefully considered my next words, I couldn't help feeling like I was holding a grenade with a loose pin; there was a very real chance this would all blow up in my face, but it was a chance I would have to take.

"I'm not sure how much Edward told you about my past…" I began before Alice interrupted in a bored tone.

"You're not just a shape-shifter, you're the re-incarnated goddess of vengeance, and you believe I was your sister and a fellow goddess."

I shifted my gaze to Edward who had tensed but was merely looking at Alice with consternation. Looking back at Alice, she seemed somewhat pleased to have garnered such a response from him.

"So how do you feel about all of that, Alice?"

Annoyance flickered across her face before her bored mask fell back into place. "Well, Dr. Phil, I would say you had either gone completely 'round the bend or were an utter liar, but since Edward believes you, I'm willing to listen, at least for a little while."

I needed to touch Alice to really find out how she felt, but I doubted outright asking to hold her hand was going to go over well. I wondered if I could show her a memory the way Dad and Jake had shown me some of theirs. Perhaps Alice wouldn't mind me reading her emotions if she got something in return. Even if I managed to do my part correctly, I wasn't sure a non-shape-shifter would be able to see anything, but I figured it was worth a shot.

"I think I can show you a memory from your past life if you would like." She looked skeptical, and Edward seemed surprised by my offer.

"Okay," she replied hesitantly. "What do I need to do?"

"Just stay still and concentrate on what I'm sending your way."

Pulling my right hand away from Edward so I wouldn't be disrupted, I lightly placed my left hand on her chilled forearm, and her eyes drifted closed. I could pick up on her curiosity and a hint of fear, but she was being completely open. There was not a shadow of deception crossing her mind. I tried to think of what memory would be best to show her. Though my latest vision was from Lyssa's memory and not Issy's, Lyssa never looked in a mirror nor did anything that would help me prove to Alice that she really was reincarnated as well. The only vision I could think of that clearly showed that Lyssa and Alice were the same person was when Issy cursed Lyssa to forget her past, and that seemed like a bad introduction.

My mind kept flipping through images until it landed on one that surprised me. I didn't remember seeing the image before, but it felt familiar. Alice was wearing a dove-gray, empire-waist dress decorated with lilac ribbons. Lilac feathers bobbed on her head where they were pinned to her cropped, curled hair. She was dancing with a man who had to be Jasper, though his hair was trimmed shorter than the way he wore it now, and he was uniformed in full military dress.

I pulled the memory forward with a sense of déjà vu and projected it to Alice as I watched. She gasped as the image took full form, expanding to a large, candle-lit ballroom filled with people dressed in Napoleonic garb. Alice appeared to be teaching Jasper a dance, and her sweet laughter peeled across the room where I approached from several yards away.

I reached her side, and if I could have stopped the hand that reached for her arm, I would have. Watching in retrospect, knowing that somewhere along the way Lyssa and Issy had begun to hate each other, I couldn't help wishing I could give Alice and Jasper their moment of happiness.

The hand reached its destination, and Issy's blandly pleasant voice filled the resulting silence. "Lyssa, my sweet, would you come with me for a moment?"

She turned her gaze up to me, storm-gray pools swirling with despair and pleading with me not to follow my course. "No, Issy, please, not this time, let me have him, just this once. I will even leave him human."

I wished I could have made Issy drop Lyssa's arm, but instead I released Alice's and pulled myself out of the memory. Alice's eyes were still closed and her lips trembled. I glanced at Jasper who was gently rubbing her back with one hand.

Her lids fluttered open to reveal the golden Cullen eyes I had become accustomed to seeing on Edward, but to me it seemed that Alice's eyes should be the same shade as Lyssa's. Alice was obviously shaken, but I had no idea if she would be more or less likely to help Edward and me after seeing the memory.

"Why was Jasper there?"

"He was reincarnated too, but not like us, he was a human as far as I know. He just seemed to keep finding his way to you."

Jasper looked down at Alice with a soft smile. "You always say we were meant to be together through all time. 'Spose you were right."

She briefly smiled at him but turned back to me with a frown. "Then why was I begging to keep him?"

I looked around the table of vampires all looking at me questioningly (except for Rosalie who was looking in the opposite direction distractedly). I took a deep breath before I continued. "You kept making him into a vampire which angered the other gods and the Fates because he was cheating his destiny. The rest of the family would dispose of him, and you weren't too happy about it."

Edward tried to mask his shock, and Rosalie's growl indicated that she was paying attention after all. Alice, however, seemed to be taking the information calmly, as if she was academically removed from the subject. "That memory was clearly from the early nineteenth century. Were the other gods and the Fates even active at the time?"

She had a good point. "I'm really not sure, but I doubt that mattered much to the family by then. The vampires and the Strigoi Vii had been fighting for millennia, occasionally calling truces, and in the end, the vampires decimated our family, perhaps with the help of one of our own."

Alice's eyes brightened with awareness. "You think I betrayed our family."

I shook my head. "I don't know what to think; my memories are too choppy for me to form an honest opinion. My dad, on the other hand, believes you're the guilty party. He also thinks it's possible you still remember what you did and may be planning to do further damage. It is a bit of a coincidence that we would all land in this tiny town about the same time."

Emmett spoke up from across the table. "You think this is bad, you should visit Spoons."

Edward grimaced and looked at me apologetically. "He's been waiting for an opportunity to say that for seventy years."

Emmett rolled his eyes. "Sorry we can't all be brooding geniuses. Maybe you should go crawl back in your coffin if you don't like my wit."

"Well, if you'd use more than half of it…"

"Boys!" Alice interrupted. "Serious conversation here. Let the grown-ups talk."

I continued what I had been about to say before Emmett's wise-crack. "I think my dad just needs to see that you and the rest of your family have no intention of hurting us. If he can get some one-on-one time with each of you and sees that you're willing to be completely honest with him, I think he'll be willing to accept that you're not hiding anything."

Edward was obviously picking the plan apart in his mind. "Do you really think that's all it will take to get him to trust us? To make him willing to let you and I see each other?"

"That's not all of it. I'm also trying to think of a way to make him see the connection between us. If he sees that it's more than just a high school crush, that it might be supernaturally strengthened, maybe he'll be more willing to listen."

I think he would have blushed if he could have. Instead he just smiled bashfully.

Rosalie and Emmett were quietly arguing, hissing quickly back and forth so that the rest of us couldn't figure out what they were saying. Emmett threw his hands up in the air in defeat and leaned back with his thick arms crossed over his chest, angrily glaring at the ceiling.

I looked to Rosalie to figure out what had caused the dramatics, and she was glaring at me. "Why should we help you with anything?"

To my surprise, Alice spoke up before I could. "Edward is our brother, and we should support him in any way we can."

Rosalie's lips twisted into a wry grin, though her eyes remained narrowed. "Yes, but what if she—" Rosalie shot me another nasty glare, "--intends to lure him away and cut him into bite-sized pieces? She went on and on about how her family didn't trust vampires, so why should we trust her?"

Alice was about to snap at her again when I spoke up. "You're right, you don't have any reason to trust me. You hardly know me. I do want you to know, though, that just as Alice and Jasper were together in the past, so were Edward and I. I wouldn't do anything to hurt him." Other than accidentally killing him in a past life while I was trying to make him into a vampire.

The statuesque blonde examined me, then shrugged and looked away. She looked bored again, but I still believed she was a little impressed that I didn't let her steamroll me.

The conversation continued with plans for me to try to convince my dad that there was something special about my relationship with Edward, and so he should give the Cullens a chance to show that they meant no harm. I found my hand once again wrapped in Edward's, and occasionally my mind would stray when he would rub his thumb across my knuckles. When we couldn't come up with anything better than just begging dad to go along with meeting the Cullens, Emmett changed the subject.

"You ought to go hunting with us the next time we go up to Goat Rocks. I can't wait to test my strength against a goddess." He grinned with excitement.

I laughed, imagining us chucking logs in an open field. "I'm positive you're stronger than me, but I may have a few tricks up my sleeve."

The bell rang signaling the end of lunch, and Alice and Edward were once again holding a near silent conversation, punctuated only by the nod of his head. He turned to me. "Hey, we've got a couple of things to talk about, so I'll catch up to you." Our hands parted and mine felt bereft, missing his touch already.

I started to walk to class and was startled when someone grabbed my arm. I looked up to meet Jasper's laughing eyes. "Slow down there! I thought you were about to fly across the courtyard."

Looking around I realized I had made more progress than I realized and smiled back at him ruefully. "Whoops. Wasn't paying attention, I guess."

We continued walking and he quietly yet purposefully spoke. "Thank you."

I glanced at him curiously. "You're welcome. I take it we're talking about my wanting to make amends with Alice."

One side of his mouth tugged up. "Well, no. But thanks for that too. I want to thank you for sticking by Edward, even when it means you're going up against your father whom you obviously respect and admire. Edward told me that your job was once to distribute happiness to those who deserved it, and if anyone deserves it, it's Edward."

I wondered if Edward had bothered to mention that more recently my job description was somewhat less pleasant. "What if I don't deserve happiness?"

His grin turned thoughtful. "Maybe if you work at making Edward happy, you'll earn your own happiness if you haven't already. I said Edward deserves happiness. I didn't say he was going to make it easy for you to give it to him."

I chuckled, trusting his judgment as someone who had known Edward longer than I had been alive (this time around). "I'll remember that."

"Good, but if you tell him I said that, I'll deny it."

I laughed again. "Duly noted."

He started to walk away with a short wave, and soon Edward took his place by my side, though he reached out for my hand.

"What was that about?" he asked in confusion.

I reached my free hand up to smooth away the wrinkle between his eyes. "We were just talking about happiness."

He quirked an eyebrow but didn't press for details. "What did you and Alice discuss?"

He smiled secretively. "My after school plans. Do you think it would be alright if I came over after your dad goes to work tonight? We can hang out in your backyard if you like, so I won't stink up your house."

I sighed, thinking about how much I would love to have my house smell like Edward. He could be my own personal air-freshener.

"Sure, come on over. My dad should be gone by six." His eyes glinted mischievously as we walked into Biology. We sat at our table, and once we were settled, our hands found each other once again.

"Are you sure you have to go to Seattle on Saturday?" He asked with a note of petulance.

I sighed, not wanting to talk about the dance again. "Yes, I'm in desperate need of some new kicks, and I want to look at some other things. Besides, I thought I'd use the time to butter up the Chief."

"Can we see each other when you get back? Will he be going to work?"

"Yeah, we can hang out when I get back. But no dancing."

He smiled. "Are you sure? Not even in private?"

I wondered what he was plotting. "Maybe in private, but definitely not at a teenage hormone-fest."

"Agreed then, it's a date." I swallowed the lump that formed in my throat at his words and nodded timidly.

Mr. Banner entered the room pulling a television stand, and cheers went across the room when he turned out the lights. The pull between Edward and I seemed to intensify in the dark, but I managed to keep from crawling into his lap. Instead, he moved our clasped hands onto our table and carefully moved his fingers around every millimeter of my hand and lower arm as if memorizing each tiny bit. I shivered as his fingers traced along my veins on the underside of my forearm, and he chuckled quietly.

Class passed more quickly than Biology ever had in my life, and soon he was walking me to the gym. We parted with easy smiles though I keenly felt the loss of his touch already.

After I changed into my P.E. clothes and walked out onto the court, I went over to Mike who was leaning against the railing of the bleachers with his arms crossed and a glare on his face. "Hey, Mike, what's wrong?"

He slid a glance my way and seeing my genuine concern, he sighed. "Bella, Cullen? Are you kidding me?"

I stiffened, knowing I was likely to be harsh if he dared to criticize Edward. "What about him?"

"He looks at you like you're some possession, like he wants to drag you off and lock you away in a tower somewhere!"

I held in a laugh as I shook my head. "Thanks for the concern, Betty Friedan, but there's no reason to worry."

He was clearly flabbergasted, his mouth hanging open and his eyes bulging. "Betty… what?"

"Never mind. Look, he's not going to go all caveman on me and haul me off over his shoulder so just chill."

Mike chewed on his lip with an aggravated expression. "I still don't like him."

"Fine, then don't date him, and if he ends up being a jerk, you have my permission to say 'I told you so.' Deal?" I proffered my hand.

He rolled his eyes and slapped his hand into mine. "Deal."

With my most winning smile I clapped my arm around his shoulder. "Let's go get medieval on some shuttlecocks."

The rest of the class went by pleasantly, at least for Mike and me. Our opposing teams on the badminton court might have disagreed, but all those who watched us left the class feeling satisfied, if drowsy, after I spent the hour feeding off their energy.

Edward was waiting for me by the door of the gym after I changed clothes. He wrinkled his nose in faux-disgust as he took in my bedraggled appearance. I playfully elbowed him in his rock-hard abs, which might have just been an excuse to touch them. "Hey, I was working hard in there. Give a girl a break."

He enveloped me in a hug, pulling me close and laying a loud lip-smack on the top of my damp hair. "Gotta love a broad who's not afraid to get a little dirty."

I wiggled away, suddenly self-conscious when I realized that with his extra sensitive sense of smell, I probably reeked of sweat.

Knowing what I was thinking despite his claim that he couldn't read my mind, he pulled me close and whispered in my ear. "You smell wonderful. You always do."

I glanced up at him in disbelief and shook my head. "Flattery will get you nowhere. I'm going to go home and shower, and I guess I'll see you around six."

His grin mystified me. "I'll see you later."

When I walked through the front door a few minutes later, I was humming and dancing along to the song on my mp3 player. Dad watched me from the kitchen table with a smile. He was already in his uniform, though he still had more than a couple of hours until he had to go in to work. I came up behind him and hugged his neck, glancing down at the newspaper he had open. "Thirty-three down is asparagus. Hey, why are you already all khaki-ed up?"

He didn't look at me as he answered. "I'm leaving in thirty minutes. I switched my shift around tomorrow. Danny's going to take the night shift for me so I can catch the game, so I'm going to pull a twenty-four hour now."

I grimaced, knowing a full day at the Forks P.D. was never fun. "Why aren't you just watching the game at the station as usual?"

He lowered his head even closer to the newspaper as he filled in an answer. "Jake and Billy are coming over here to watch the flat-screen," he mumbled.

My eyes widened at the news, and I laughed. "Did you and Billy finally make up? Are you going to start doing everything together again? Would you prefer we call you Barles or Chilly?"

"It was just an accident," he muttered irritably.

"What was an accident?"

"I got excited about the game, and I just picked up the phone without thinking. By the time I remembered we weren't on speaking terms, he had answered."

My mouth dropped open, and I stared at him in shock for a moment before I dropped into a chair with side-splitting laughter. "You—you didn't mean to call? That's priceless!"

He glared at the newspaper, not at all amused, and I calmed myself and dashed away my tears of giddiness. "And to think, I was about to congratulate you for acting like an adult and letting bygones be bygones."

His lips finally twitched in amusement. "Yeah, well, guess I'm still a rotten little kid at heart. Speaking of rotten, shouldn't you go shower?" His eyes shifted to glance at me, filled with humor.

I stuck my tongue out at him as I stood. "Be nice or I'll hug you again."

As I climbed the stairs he called behind me, "You better not have stunk up the duds."

After I showered and dried my hair, I went back downstairs to find Dad buckling on his holster by the door. "Alright, kid. You know where to reach me if you need anything."

I nodded and waved as he stepped out the door. My cell phone was still in my backpack upstairs, and I thought about calling Edward to see if he wanted to come over earlier than we had planned. Then I remembered that he had behaved strangely whenever we talked about what time he could come over, and I was struck with suspicion.

Slipping on my shoes, I opened the back door and glanced around the yard, but I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Edward was very near, though, judging by the pull in my chest. I followed the sensation into the woods until I reached a tree a few yards away from my house. Stopping, I looked around in confusion, and then I looked up.

A black Puma (of the shoe variety) dangled from a blue-jean clad leg ten feet above my head. I jumped and to my surprise actually managed to slap the shoe. It retreated onto the branch and was replaced with a hand splayed open to help me up. Once more I jumped and gripped tightly to the hand which pulled me up onto the branch.

Edward perched on the branch next to me and lowered his legs again as he smiled at me. "Fancy meeting you here."

Returning his smile, I leaned against the tree-trunk, mirroring his position by draping my legs on either side of the branch. "You knew Dad was going to work early, didn't you?"

His smirk was already in place. "Just one of the many perks of having a psychic in the family."

"So Alice can see my dad but not me?"

"Well, she can only see him when whatever he's doing isn't related to you at all, but it seems he rarely does anything without you in mind. However, Alice saw me disappear about this time, so she knew I must be with you."

"What a quirky little gift she has."

He chuckled. "Tell me about it."

Shifting closer to me, he reached out for my hands. We sat quietly for a moment, and I listened to the sounds of birds and wildlife rustling about the forest and realized that all of the tiny living things were keeping their distance from us. We were in a sphere of solitude, and I wondered if the creatures could sense us as predators encroaching on their territory.

I glanced at Edward and found him staring at our joined hands thoughtfully.

"Whatcha thinking?" I asked with a smile.

He returned the smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Earlier today, when you were talking to Jessica, were you joking about wanting to play the field?"

Sighing, I glared at him with consternation. "Of course I was joking. You know, if you don't want to hear things you dislike, maybe you shouldn't eavesdrop."

His smirk returned full force. "Ah, but there's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different than the world inside your head."

I snorted indelicately. He so didn't want to start a quote war with me. "Well, if you're so familiar with Mr. Wilder, than you should have known I was joking without asking. After all, people are meant to go through life two by two. 'Tain't natural to be lonesome."

Edward's smile became melancholy, and I curiously probed. "What, not a fan of Our Town?"

He shook his head. "I went to see it the year it opened in New York. It was billed as 'a sentimental journey through the early twentieth century.' I suppose I wanted to relish in nostalgia for a night. Instead I was force-fed the concept that life is too short, and we should appreciate our loved ones. My life was anything but short and almost devoid of love."

"What about your family? The other Cullens, I mean."

"I was feeling very much like a fifth wheel at the time. Alice and Jasper hadn't found us yet, Emmett had just joined us a couple of years before, and he and Rose were still in their honeymoon phase, ignoring the existence of everyone else. Things were a bit strained between me and Carlisle and Esme."

"Because you felt like you were alone?"

"Partly, but mostly because I had gone out on my own a few years earlier, and Esme still blamed herself for my leaving. She still does blame herself, truth be told. Just another reason for me to feel guilty."

"Why else would you feel guilty?"

He glanced up at me sadly, and then looked back at our hands. "When I was alone, I ignored Carlisle's teachings and fed from and killed humans."

My stomach churned uneasily. "Did you pull a Dracula and seduce your way into young women's bedrooms to steal their lifeblood?"

Surprised by my question, he looked at me curiously. "The way your mind works, Bella Swan, is a complete mystery. No, I read minds until I found the vilest criminal in the vicinity, and once I found them alone, I killed them."

My distress seeped out of my body, which probably should have worried me even more. "That doesn't sound so bad. You were just making sure justice was served."

He shook his head in wonder at my statement. "Bella, I had no right to cast judgment on them. I was just a foolish young vampire with a God complex."

Trying to pull him out of his funk, I smiled. "Maybe you were just unknowingly carrying out my will while I was unable to kill them myself. What a team, huh?"

He chuckled ominously. "I can see our senior yearbook quote now: Couple most likely to maim and dismember in the name of vengeance."

I couldn't stop the smile that spread across my face. "Would it be morbid of me to laugh right now?"

"Probably, but go for it anyway."

It wasn't long before his laughter joined my giggles, and soon we were on to other topics. I told him about my vision from the night before, about the oddity of Lyssa having a vision within the vision (and about Helen of Troy's curious resemblance to Rosalie, which he begged me never to tell her considering that her ego was already too inflated for her own good).

The conversation segued to more inane subjects and before I knew it, it was dark, and I was yawning.

"I forget you need to sleep," he stated apologetically.

"Yeah, it's a terrible nuisance," I replied as I swung my legs to one side of the branch. We jumped down still holding hands, and we both landed steadily, though I disturbed the leaves on the ground more than he did.

Without a word, he turned me toward him and pulled me close. Our lips met without hesitation as if we had been kissing for ages. I kept myself from pressing further, following his lead as he kept the kiss sweet and innocent, despite that it was stirring less than pure emotions inside me. I sighed when we broke apart and he responded by kissing the tip of my nose.

"Until tomorrow," he whispered gently, and then disappeared in a blur, drifting leaves the only sign of his passing.

* * *

**E/N: Thank y'all so much for the outpouring of love last chapter. It really buttered my biscuits. Think you could do it again? That review button could use some lovin' too :-D**

**Come play on the twilighted thread! **

www(dot)twilighted(dot)net(slash)forum(slash)viewtopic(dot)php?f=33&t=3943


End file.
